Re: as promised, docs: git for the confused

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Dec 12, 2005, 18:18 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0512121010550.15597@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <20051212195319.11d41269.tihirvon@gmail.com>

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005, Timo Hirvonen wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> 
> Me too.  BTW, new users very likely read tutorial.txt first.  But it is
> way too low level (git-cat-file, git-write-tree...).  Maybe those low
> level commands should be described in technical/ instead?  The tutorial
> would be logical place for examples.

I'd almost suggest skipping the technical notes in the current tutorial, and just gearing it directly more towards a regular user.

When I started writing it, I cared more about people understanding how git works internally. I think that was useful too, but I suspect that it's less useful than just knowing how to use git, and there _are_ enough people out there that understand how git works under the hood that it probably would be much better to concentrate on getting people _first_ used to using git, and then having a separate tutorial for "what goes under the hood".

So instead of teaching people about "git-read-tree --reset HEAD" etc that you'd never know on your own, just teach about "git reset". And not bothering with the "git-write-tree + git-commit-tree + git-update-ref" approach, just make people use "git commit" from the very beginning.

Anybody willing to just strip out the raw internals talk?

Then we could add a small section about importing from a tar-file.

			Linus