Re: [PATCH] git-revert is one of the most misunderstood command in git, help users out.

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Nov 5, 2007, 23:40 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0711052325090.4362@racer.site>
In-Reply-To: <7vlk9cmiyq.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

Hi,

On Mon, 5 Nov 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> Steven Grimm <koreth@midwinter.com> writes:
> 
> > But that suggested command is not going to convince anyone they were
> > wrong about git being hard to learn. I wonder if instead of saying, "I
> > know what you meant, but I'm going to make you type a different
> > command," we should make git revert just do what the user meant.
> >
> > There is already precedent for that kind of mixed-mode UI:
> >
> > git checkout my-branch
> > vs.
> > git checkout my/source/file.c
> 
> That's an example of mixed-mode UI, but what you are suggesting is quite 
> different, isn't it?
> 
> There is no other officially supported single-command-way to
> checkout paths out of the index.

Okay, let's step back a bit.

We taught "git show" to show other objects than commits, by doing the obvious things. So there _is_ a precendent to changing a commands behaviour to accept more than just commits. And there was already another command for the same purpose, cat-file, which was never meant as porcelain however.

Now, what does "revert" _mean_? At the moment, it wants a commit, and will undo the changes that commit introduced, _and commits it_ (asking for a message).

What would I expect "git revert -- file" to do? It would undo the changes to that file -- and since no commit was specified, I would expect it to look at the changes against the index. (IOW exactly what Steven proposed.)

To continue the analogy, it would have to commit the undoing of the change. But since that change never was committed, I think it is more natural to _not_ commit it.

In the same way, I would expect "git revert <commit> -- file" to undo the changes in that commit to _that_ file (something like "git merge-file file <commit>:file <commit>^:file"), but this time commit it, since it was committed at one stage.

IMHO this would be a consistent behaviour _and_ help new git users.

After all, we are not Python, supposedly narrowing users down to one-way-to-do-things only.

Ciao, Dscho