From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2007 22:50:26 GMT
Subject: Re: Deprecate git-fetch-pack?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0711112247350.4362@racer.site>
In-Reply-To: <7vabpkbebj.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

Hi,

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu> writes:
> 
> > On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 01:16:09PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> >> Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:
> >> > This should be a non-issue.  We really should start deprecating 
> >> > "git-<command>" in favour of "git <command>" for real.
> >> >
> >> > New users should not even be told that this is correct usage.
> >> 
> >> If you can write "git-commit" and "git commit" interchangeably
> >> while you cannot say "git-cat-file" and are forced to say "git
> >> cat-file", I suspect that would lead to a great confusion and
> >> unhappy users.
> >
> > One of the reasons why I use git-diff and git-commit and in particular
> > "git-rebase --interactive master" very often is that it allows my
> > shell's bang completion to work.  (i.e., "!git-rebase").  If we tell
> > people they can not use "git-rebase", and must instead use "git
> > rebase" instead, I would consider that pretty annoying/obnoxious.
> 
> Oh, of course.
> 
> But my impression was that Johannes was talking about
> deprecating git-<foo> form only for plumbing, so that the users
> will only see git-<foo> for the Porcelain.  That would not break
> your bang completion for the porcelain commands.
> 
> If Johannes was talking about deprecating all git-<foo> form,
> then that would indeed break your bang completion, but it has
> conceptually a much bigger problem.  The topic was about fixing
> "a new user sees too many git commands and gets scared" problem.
> Deprecaing all git-<foo> form just replaces the problem with "a
> new user sees too many git subcommands and gets scared" problem,
> without solving anything.

I beg to differ.  The biggest problem with a new user seeing all those 
completions is that this user is scared.

Just taking away that first shock would be helping very much.  I mean, we 
_still_ have the reputation of being more complex than other SCMs, but I 
do not think that this reputation is completely deserved.

However, reputations are formed by first time impressions.  It is _hard_ 
to get rid of a bad first time impression.

But yes, I was only proposing to deprecate all usage of git-<bla> in the 
documentation.

Maybe I'm wrong.  Wouldn't be the first time.

Ciao,
Dscho