Re: for newbs = little exercise / tutorial / warmup for windows and other non-sophisticated new Git users :-)

From: Daniel Barkalow <barkalow@iabervon.org>
Date: Dec 30, 2008, 19:42 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LNX.1.00.0812301348440.19665@iabervon.org>
In-Reply-To: <gj68a0$u56$3@ger.gmane.org>

On Sat, 27 Dec 2008, Zorba wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> Here is a little exercise / tutorial / warm-up for someone starting out with 
> Git. If you're anyting like me you may find the tutorials etc. on git.or.cz 
> a bit daunting. I recommend you try this after reading the user manual but 
> before tearing your hair out trying to follow all the examples in the user 
> manual. After you've followed this simple workflow, then go back to the more 
> advanced stuff  in the tutorials and user manuals (like cloning repositories 
> and creating and merging branches).
>
> I created this exercise to try and model our workflow and what we wanted to 
> use git for = tracking a project with multiple files where the filebase 
> might change frequently from one version to the next.

One thing I find unrealistic about this example is that you've got BC.txt and C.txt when you're creating version A, and you've even copied them to the working directory. In real life, you'd almost certainly not create the files until you're preparing the version that includes them, at least if your history is version A, version B, version C. (Now, it's possible that your history is "create a bunch of files", "create version A without BC.txt and C.txt"; in parallel to version A, create version B without AC.txt and C.txt; but that's a different process entirely.)

I think the exercise would come out much more easily if you only created ABC.txt and AC.txt at the beginning, made version A, added BC.txt and removed AC.txt, made version B, created C.txt and recovered AC.txt, and made version C; this is, I believe, what would actually happen.

If you're having trouble with "git commit" putting you in a lousy editor, somebody probably needs to do better packaging. "git commit" (without the -m) should open up the best editor available on your computer, but it doesn't seem to have a good idea about your preferences for editors. Of course, part of the problem is people who don't like that editor rarely use the command line on Windows. Do you have a good editor for Windows? How have you specified it, if so?

	-Daniel
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