Re: [RFC PATCH 0/5] Introduce -t, --table for status/add commands

From: Jacob Stopak <jacob@initialcommit.io>
Date: Oct 22, 2023, 06:04 UTC
Message-ID: <ZTS7YsxSE8UA+n4G.jacob@initialcommit.io>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqwmvgoovg.fsf@gitster.g>

On Fri, Oct 20, 2023 at 04:28:19PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> 
> You are not alone in feeling the impedance mismatch between the
> intended audience the patch(es) try to help (pointy-clicky GUI
> users)

I'm sure there's overlap with "pointy-clicky GUI users" but my point isn't to directly cater to them. I find it intersting to think about how visual (and ok fine even gui) tools can be used as bridge tools that can be discarded one the important concepts are solidified, and maybe resurrected in a moment of stupidity or strife.

It's like yes use the crutch if you need it, but then do it the real way once you get it.

And altho this is a visual helper feature, it keeps the user within the terminal, close to the Git cli and may help some subset stay there.

> and the codebase the patch(es) modify (perhaps spartan
> command line interface).

Git does have some comforting features doesn't it? For example the hints, as well as the nice pretty colored --graph option for log. I'm sure I'm missing some others? Isn't there a file called pretty.c?! :D

> I did wonder why this is not made as a
> part of sugarcoating the command line interface with some GUI that
> shows what could be added, what has been added, and the stuff in its
> "git status" equivalent.

I'm working on a couple of tools (ok fine basically guis) that include this feature.

The reason to bring it up here is that a common feedback I got on my existing tool was "add something like this into git", so I was curious about what was possible to do from the Git cli.

This would obviously be the best way for the feature to reach the widest possible audience and get the most use. Any standalone tool I create would get a teensy fraction of the use that a feature in Git itself would get, so I figured I'd give it a whirl.