Re: newby question about merge.

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: May 16, 2007, 22:39 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0705162325020.6410@racer.site>
In-Reply-To: <46d6db660705161235k130fabc2i6acb45d71b85891e@mail.gmail.com>

Hi,

On Wed, 16 May 2007, Christian MICHON wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> On 5/16/07, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> > [please, Christian, do not cut the Cc: list. In particular, do _not_ 
> > cut the person you are _responding_ to from the Cc: list]
> 
> [ oops. I thought some of us sometimes receive doublets of emails,
> being in reply_to and cc of git@vger.kernel.org. point *taken* ]

Actually, I get doublets. Which is good, since I am more unlikely to just delete _two_ copies of the same mail.

> I know the API changes frequently. But engineers don't like too many 
> changes usually, and like to carry a portable/stable way. "git cat-file" 
> at least behaves as it was in 1.4.x :)

Those changes were good changes. "git-show" is here to stay. "git-cat-file" only appeals to Unix zealots who even sleep in their command line.

Show 8 quoted lines

> > > As far as I can tell, using git-1.4.4.4 or ealier, you would still 
> > > need git-cat-file -p... to fix this merge conflict.
> > 
> > If you are using pre-1.5 Git, you should really, really upgrade.
> 
> While in principle I'd agree, in practice I do not. Git API changes 
> increased learning curve for people who actually started with git a year 
> ago.

I think I can pretty much guarantee that git-cat-file will stay plumbing. As much as it will keep its not-exactly-user-friendly command line arguments.

And I can pretty much guarantee that git-show will always be the good thing for an end user to call.

Show 5 quoted lines

> > And most importantly: if you suggest a change in the man pages, it 
> > should reflect the new Git versions, _not_ the old ones.
> 
> nope, I would not dare to suggest. I'm not a git developer: just a git 
> user :)

You are right: for general help, this list is open for older versions of Git. What triggered my response, though, was the suggestion to put that particular command line, which indeed scares people away from Git (I tried it on somebody), into a man page.

	git-show <revision>:<path>

is so much nicer.

Ciao, Dscho