[ANNOUNCE] Git User's Survey 2008

Hi all,

We would like to ask you a few questions about your use of the Git version control system. This survey is mainly to understand who is using Git, how and why.

The results will be published to the Git wiki and discussed on the git mailing list.

The survey would be open from 1 September till 10 October.

Please devote a few minutes of your time to fill this simple questionnaire, it will help a lot the git community to understand your needs, what you like of git, and of course what you don't like of it.

The survey can be found here:
  http://www.survs.com/survey?id=M3PIVU72&channel=2WXE4BVTW8

This got on Hacker News and got a few comments on the length of the survey. It did take me a pretty good amount of time to do.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=291560

I'm afraid the length and time required to fill it out will skew the answers away from beginning type users, even though a lot of the questions are aimed at them.

It may be a good idea next year to do an adaptive survey, where there are a few of the basic questions that could be answered in a few minutes and if the user is a beginner it stops there, if they are more advanced, it asks more advanced questions. I would be happy to help set this up if there is interest, whoever is in charge of this.

Scott

On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 2:29 PM, Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 8:13 AM, Scott Chacon <schacon@gmail.com> wrote:

Well, the changes are saved even if you don't finish it, right?

So you can fill it in different sessions.

It's too long IMO. I gave up on it half way. Do you really need to know the frequency of use of _each_ command? :(

Jakub Narebski wrote:

David John wrote:

First, there was longer period discussing on git mailing list about what to put in the survey. Something like that was requested on git mailing list; perhaps I was bit overzealous...

Second, you can always _skip_ answering the question.

Last, if you are accessing the survey from the same computer, and you have cookies enabled, you can always return and finish/correct survey later. Perhaps that should be stated upfront, and not only at the end 9after submitting survey)...

On 2008-09-01 10:34:47 +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:

One option to keep in mind for next year could be to make a two-page survey: first a short page with the most important stuff, then a second page with the rest. The second page should begin with something like

  Thank you for filling out the first part of the survey. If you have
  the time, you may fill out this second part as well, but it is _not_
  required; you may just close this window if you like.

Jakub Narebski wrote:

Hm, I've got cookies disabled usually; the survey had a link at the bottom which was a javascript link, and it lead me to a screen asking me for my email and a button "inform about news" or some such (kind of 'spammy' purpose only I guess). So I'm not sure whether my entries got saved at all?

I've found the many questions interesting as it showed me quite a number of interesting commands I didn't know about yet (so I said "never" to all of them, but that doesn't mean they aren't useful to me, just that I didn't know about them!):

git add -u / -A

git log --graph

git relink

git request-pull

(git show-branch)

(git stash --keep-index)

(git whatchanged)

Christian.

Christian Jaeger wrote:

I wholeheartedly agree -- going in-depth on the survey contents would make a great beginner -> intermediate git tutorial. I learned a lot about what I don't know yet from participating.

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 2:20 PM, Christian Jaeger <christian@jaeger.mine.nu> wrote:

I agree 100% :-)

-Tor Arvid-

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 3:46 PM, Tor Arvid Lund <torarvid@gmail.com> wrote:

Me too.

Hi

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 7:49 PM, Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:

+Same for me. I am looking around for more information about some commands/usage, but this is not always friendly with the man pages.

May I suggest to add a question next year: which email client do you use to handle git attachements (if you do) ?

I cannot find yet a good workflow with either mutt, gmail or evolution over imap.

If somebody could explain how they handle the git send-mail patches they recieve, I would be thankful. How do you create .mbox files? What is your workflow when you deal with mails?

Thank you for this great survey, 2008 edition !

"Marc-André Lureau" <marcandre.lureau@gmail.com> writes:

I almost always use git-format-patch to generate patches (some people use git-show or git-diff for proof-of-concept patches), and either use git-send-email (I have sendmail configured to send mails via GMail, but my computer is single-user machine; you can try sendemail.smpt* options instead, if you have appropriate Perl modules installed), or use KMail: Message > Insert file, ensuring that in Options I have Word wrapping turned off.

In some rare case I used 'stg mail' (also via properly configured sendmail).

On Fri, Sep 05, 2008 at 04:46:02PM +0300, Marc-André Lureau wrote:

  In mutt, I tag the mails with patches, ;C them to an empty file and
git am the file.

				Petr "Pasky" Baudis

On Fri, Sep 05, 2008 at 04:46:02PM +0300, Marc-André Lureau wrote:

When I receive patches via mutt, I usually apply them with this:

  macro index,pager A '<pipe-message>git<space>am<enter>'

which will apply in your current directory. For my git folder, I use a hook to always apply to my git repo:

  folder-hook git macro index,pager A
  '<pipe-message>cd<space>$HOME/compile/git<space>&&<space>git<space>am<enter>'

If there are several patches in a series, I may pull them into an mbox and apply separately:

  [in mutt]
  T pattern [or tag message individually, or Esc-T to tag thread]
  ;C ~/name-of-patch-topic

  [in another terminal]
  cd /path/to/repo
  git am ~/name-of-patch-topic

To send one or two patches, I create an mbox and then use mutt to send:

  git format-patch -s --stdout "$@" >.mbox
  mutt -f .mbox
  rm -f .mbox

and in my muttrc:

  macro index,pager b ":set edit_headers=yes<enter><resend-message>:set edit_headers=no<enter>"

Hope that helps,

-Peff

Great survey. Just filled the questionnaire.

Felipe(Brazil)

Hi all,

We would like to ask you a few questions about your use of the Git version control system. This survey is mainly to understand who is using Git, how and why.

The results will be published on the Git Wiki
  http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitSurvey2008
and discussed on the git mailing list.

The survey would be open from 1 September till 10 October.

Please devote a bit of your time to fill this simple questionnaire; it will help a lot the Git community to understand your needs, what you like of Git, and of course what you don't like of it.

The survey can be found here:
  http://www.survs.com/survey?id=M3PIVU72&channel=2WXE4BVTW8
  http://tinyurl.com/GitSurvey2008

With 2200+ responses to Git User's Survey 2008 
  http://tinyurl.com/GitSurvey2008
I guess it is not that much important to spread the word further.

Nevertheless if you have the ability, please put announcement about Git User's Survey 2008 (it ends at October 10); for example if you have a VCS related blog, or know who to contact about putting the announcement on freedesktop.org web interfaces and git.debian.org, or can contact local LUG, please do so.

TIA

Hi all,

Git User's Survey 2008 ended at the end of Monday, 13 October 2008, around 23:45 CEST (GMT+0200).

Could you then *take down* notice about Git User's Survey 2008, and/or perhaps announce that it is closed?

Beginnings of Survey summary should be available soon at 
  http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitSurvey2008

Currently you can get there raw data (individual responses). One can find there also to online analysis (on Survs.com) and beginnings of partial survey summary (send to git mailing list).

On Mon, 1 Sep 2008, Petr Baudis wrote:

Ah, I see (now that I force-refreshed the page ;-)) --- <b>The <a href="">Git User's Survey 2008</a> is up!</b> Please take a short while to answer the questions so that we better understand how do you use Git and improve it even more. ---

That is I think even better wording. Would you mind if I stole^W borrowed it, and use as proposal when sending requests for adding Git User's Survey 2008 announcements to other git related sites, and other git hosting sites (git.kernel.org, GitHub, Gitorious, {gitweb,cgit}.freedesktop.org,...)?

On Mon, Sep 01, 2008 at 04:48:13PM +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:

Of course I wouldn't mind. :-)

				Petr "Pasky" Baudis