Re: Inconsistencies with git log

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Nov 9, 2007, 17:38 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.0.999.0711090929130.15101@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <9e4733910711090920m6b0b7704x7c5a3849215f385c@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007, Jon Smirl wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> 
> The summary of this is that new users do not expect "git log" to give
> them the whole log when the command is executed in a subdirectory.
> This causes a training burden because of the unexpected behavior. They
> try 'git log' and then I have to tell them to use "git log ."

No. The summary is that *you* are confused.

The fact is, "git log" always has given the whole log, and there is no confusion at all. The only people who may be confused are people who misread the documentation on purpose, or who came from some broken other SCM, and are confused just because of *that*.

Git makes it very clear indeed at all points that it tracks whole history. It's a big deal. We *make* a big deal about it, and "git log" follows that very consistently.

In fact, even at the top-of-tree, "git log" and "git log ." are two totally different things, even if in practice the differences are often hard to see. But one gives the "full history", and the other gives the "simplified history for the pathnames given", and the two are REALLY REALLY different.

Try it. Do

	git log origin/pu > full
	git log origin/pu . > limited

in the git tree, and look at the differences (it might be useful to use gitk instead, and look at where the differences start! That visual difference is going to give you a lot more of an "Ahaa!" moment when you understand it). When you can explain and understand those differences, then you *really* understand git (and quite frankly, it's actually rather simple, but you have to really *think* about what those things things are).

Now, for normal use you never need to really to care. Git does a lot of things, and some random user will seldom need the full power of git, nor do they need to really care about why "git log ." and "git log" are actually not the same thing at all, even at the top level.

But you're blaming git for your *own* confusion, which probably comes from crap systems that don't even know what "history" is because they can't really track it right anyway.

		Linus