From: David Abrahams Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:27:11 GMT Subject: Re: [doc] User Manual Suggestion Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20090429063448.GA22448@coredump.intra.peff.net> On Apr 29, 2009, at 2:34 AM, Jeff King wrote: > On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 08:53:37PM -0400, David Abrahams wrote: > >>> Actually, it is not the generally of trees that I think is >>> interesting >>> there, but the generality of _objects_. That is, each of those >>> things is >>> a first-class object, and has a unique name by which it can be >>> referred. >> >> I'm sorry, but I think most people would find that so unremarkable >> that >> making a big deal about it would lead to "what am I missing here" >> confusion. Maybe a person who's exclusively used CVS (or older) >> technologies before coming to Git would be happy to know that, but >> it's >> sort of obvious. In CVS the lack of first-class directories sticks >> out >> like a sore thumb. > > Sadly, I was away from email all weekend and so missed the ensuing > storm > in this thread. :) However, I did want to respond to this one point. > > To me (and I am talking from personal experience, so it really may be > _just_ me), an important part of understanding git was understanding > the > object storage. That is, half of the idea of git is a big database of > content-addressable objects. Absolutely, it's important to know that everything is content- addressable (which essentially communicates the same important information as "the object's id is a hash of its contents"). I was trying to say that the fact that each one is a "first-class" object and has a unique name is not particularly remarkable. -- David Abrahams BoostPro Computing http://boostpro.com