Re: Cleaning up git user-interface warts

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Nov 15, 2006, 14:01 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0611151454250.13772@wbgn013.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de>
In-Reply-To: <7vu011qnl6.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

Hi,

On Tue, 14 Nov 2006, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org> writes:
> 
> > 1) make "git init" an alias for "git init-db".
> 
> Or even better, have "gh init".

Please no. It only makes things even more confusing. "git init" is perfect as it is. We can always have internal aliases from "init-db" to "init" to account for older usages.

Show 6 quoted lines

> > 2) "pull" and "push" should be symmetrical operations
> 
> I think that makes a lot of sense to have "gh pull" and "gh
> push" as symmetric operations, and make "gh merge" do the
> fast-forward and 3-way merge magic done in the current "git
> pull".  These three words would have a lot saner meaning.

I am really opposed to do "gh pull". Not only because of "gh" being completely confusing (we already _have_ "git", and for porcelains different TLAs), but "pull" _really_ is confusing by now. And Mercurial did not help one wit by insisting on their own interpretation.

Why not do something like "get/put" instead? It is

- easier to remember
- not bogus (AFAICT the meaning is not used in diametrical senses)
- shorter to type than download/upload

As for "git merge": Just by the number of arguments you can discern between the original usage and the new usage, so I am all in favour of replacing "git pull <blabla>" by "git merge <blabla>". Where "<blabla>" can be a branch or a remote or a URL (with cogito style #branchname).

Ciao, Dscho