Re: What is missing from Git v2.0

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 22, 2014, 22:03 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqmwfd2fa5.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqk3ah5i55.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 25 quoted lines

> I am not fundamentally opposed.  I just do not think it would add
> much value to new people at this point, and it will actively hurt
> if we shoved barely cooked one in 2.0.
>
> A few thinking points that are necessary to be worked out, even
> before we start imagining a plan to introduce them, off the top of
> my head, are these:
>
>  * Should we add many random aliases, or should we limit ourselves
>    only to a narrow set that everybody can agree on?
>
>  * What is the additional cognitive load do we feel comfortable
>    burdening with the new users?
>
>  * What is the exact mechanism to give these built-in aliases?
>
> Imagine that somebody says "[alias] ci = commit" and a handful of
> vocal people on this list agree that it is a good idea.  Many random
> websites start mentioning "git ci -a" in their beginner examples.
>
> Users are led to think "ci" is a command just like "commit" and does
> the same thing.... and need to learn that only the
> first kind and not the second kind cannot be used to define their
> own alias (and the users need to learn "commit" at that time as
> well).

A bit further on this point, looking into the future.

It might help if we added some "introduction" phase to the first invocation of "git init", "git clone", etc. that is interactively run on a machine where there is no $HOME/.gitconfig detected, and help the user populate it with a few selected and uncontroversial ones. Such a session might go like this:

	$ git init
        ... We do not see $HOME/.gitconfig; using Git for the first time?
        ... Let us ask a few questions to make your Git life more pleasant.
        >> What name do you want to appear on your commits?
        Sebastian Schuberth
        >> What email address do you want to appear on your commits?
	sschuberth@gmail.com
        >> You record your commits as
        ... "Sebastian Schuberth   <sschuberth@gmail.com>".
        >> OK?
        Y
        >> Do you want us to add a few sample aliases to your configuration file?
        Y
        ... Done.  You can further tweak $HOME/.gitconfig to suit
        ... Git to your taste.

And it would end up with something like this:

	$ cat $HOME/.gitconfig
        [user]
		name = <<interactively ask and record the result>>
                email = <<ditto>>
	[alias]
        	co = checkout
		lg = log --oneline

which can serve as an example the user can then tweak, without giving any false impression that "co" is any more special than whatever the user adds as a custom alias.

But the need to make the set minimum and the need to carefully think things through are still there (Ted made a very good point about "rb", which I agree with).