Re: [RFC] Questions for "Git User's Survey 2016"

From: Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>
Date: Jul 7, 2016, 17:28 UTC
Message-ID: <CAGZ79kZCbu4djv0j6WvgPO1Lr=FwFkNnECyBjweP-SsssY1J3w@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <577E6F32.7020007@gmail.com>

On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 8:03 AM, Jakub Narębski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:

> I am thinking about returning to doing the Git User's Survey, and
> I'd like to ask for feedback.

Thanks for doing the survey!

Show 7 quoted lines

>
> What I'd like to see is how people use Git, which features do they
> use and which tools (maybe there is some great unknown tool there?),
> where they go to find help about Git.
>
> What types of questions should there be in this year survey?
>

Additionally to the categories you listed, I'd like to propose

4. TEMPORAL. We may get feedback if and how much
some pain points were addressed since the last survey.
This can be done by using the very same question we used in
the last questionnaire, and see how much the answers shifted
or by doing more suggestive questions ("Last survey showed,
feature X is not easy to use, how easy is it now? Think of X
in v1.7.5")

AFAICT the last survey was 2012?

As for the content, I think submodules improved a lot since then, however I do think they could be improved even more. e.g. one question could be:

What would you think would improve submodules most if you could only pick one?

* inclusion of submodules into more commands, e.g.
  "git checkout --recurse-submodules"
* support for direct clones of submodules from a host
  (i.e. not going through the .gitmodules file, but trying
  to obtain the submodule from that superprojects
  .git/modules/<name>. This would only work for non
  bare repos)
* more fault tolerance for miss-configured submodules
* more descriptive error messages for miss-configured
  submodules
* ...

This would help to gauge how to best spend developer time when trying to improve a feature (like submodules)

Thanks, Stefan