[RFC] Git User's Survey 2009 - second trial run, and question about announcing it

This is proposed second version of questions for upcoming "Git User's Survey 2009". It contains compared to previous created version, a few fixes to phrasing of questions, moving some answers from one question to another and removing (some of) duplicate answers, and a few extra comments and explanations.

Thanks to Johan Herland, Peter Baumann, Felipe Contreras, Graham Perks and others in previous GitSurvey2009 thread for their feedback and comments.

The main visible difference from precious version is replacing question 21. "How does Git compare to other SCM tools you have used?" was replaced by "In you opinion, which areas in Git needs improvement?" suggested by Felipe, and question 29. "Should Git User's Survey be repeated next year?" was replaced by "How did you heard about this Git User's Survey?"

The last replacements reminds me of the problem of announcing this survey. Where to submit note announcing "Git User's Survey 2009" (tentative date of survey is 15 July 2009 -- 15 September 2009)? How such note should look like?

The *test* version of this year survey can be now found at the following URL (as in previous year, we use Survs.com)

  http://www.survs.com/survey?id=2PIMZGU0&channel=TFN2Y52K7Y

ATTENTION: All data in test survey would be deleted when survey
would start for real!

Below there is rendered form of survey ................................................................ Git User's Survey 2009

This survey is anonymous, but all information that the users provide (raw data) will be publicly available on the Git Wiki, at http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitSurvey2009, to allow for independent analysis.

Note that you may skip questions as you like.

You can also return to this survey after submission, and correct it, or fill more questions later. This feature makes this survey to require to have COOKIES ENABLED, at least for this site, to be able to submit.

About you 
~~~~~~~~~
1. What country do you live in?
2. How old are you (in years)?

Getting started with Git
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
3. Have you found Git easy to learn?
    * Very easy
    * Easy
    * Reasonably easy (average)
    * Hard
    * Very hard

4. Have you found Git easy to use?
    * Very easy
    * Easy
    * Reasonably easy (average)
    * Hard
    * Very hard

5. Which Git version(s) are you using?
    * pre 1.3
    * 1.3.x
    * 1.4.x
    * 1.5.x
    * 1.6.x
    * minor (maintenance) release 1.x.y.z
    * 'master' branch of official git repository
    * 'next' branch of official git repository
    * other, please specify

You can find git version by using "git --version" or "git version".

"Minor release" is additional specification, so if you for example use git version 1.6.3.3, please check both "1.6.x" and "minor release".

6. Rate your own proficiency with Git:
    * 1. novice
    * 2. casual, needs advice
    * 3. everyday use
    * 4. can offer advice
    * 5. know it very well

You can think of it as 1-5 numerical grade of your proficiency in Git. How you use Git

7. I use Git for (check all that apply):
    * work projects
    * unpaid projects
    * proprietary project
    * OSS development
    * private (unpublished) code
    * code (programming)
    * personal data
    * documents
    * static website
    * web app
    * sharing data or sync
    * backup
    * backend for wiki, blog, or other web app
    * managing configuration files
    * frontend to other SCM (e.g. git-svn)
    * other (please specify)

Note that above choices are neither orthogonal nor exclusive. You might want to check multiple answers even for a single repository.

8. How do/did you obtain Git (install and/or upgrade)?
    * binary package (includes automatic updates in usual situation)
    * source package or script
    * source tarball
    * pull from (main) repository

Explanation: binary package covers pre-compiled binary (e.g. from rpm
or deb binary packages); source package covers things like deb-src and
SRPMS/src.rpm; source script is meant to cover installation in
source-based distributions, like 'emerge' in Gentoo, and it includes
automatic update in source-based Linux distributions.

Note that this question is multiple choices question because one can install Git in different ways on different machines or on different operating systems.

9. What operating system do you use Git on?
    * Linux
    * *BSD (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, etc.)
    * MacOS X (Darwin)
    * MS Windows/Cygwin
    * MS Windows/msysGit (MINGW)
    * OpenSolaris
    * other Unix
    * Other, please specify

On Unix-based operating system you can get the name of operation system by running 'uname'.

10. What do you use to edit contents under version control with Git?
    What kind of editor, IDE or RAD you use working with Git?

    * simple text editor
    * programmers editor
    * IDE or RAD
    * WYSIWYG tool
    * other kind - please specify

* "simple text editor" option includes editors such as pico, nano,
  joe, Notepad,

* "programmets editor" option includes editors such as Emacs/XEmacs,
  Vim, TextMate, SciTE (syntax highlighting, autoindentation,
  integration with other programmers tools, etc.)

* "IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and RAD (Rapid Application
  Development)" option includes tools such as Eclipse, NetBeans IDE,
  IntelliJ IDE, MS Visual Studio, KDevelop, Anjuta, XCode,
  Code::Blocks but also tools such as Quanta+, BlueFish or Screem (for
  editing HTML, CSS, PHP etc.), and Kile or LEd for LaTeX.

* "WYSIWYG tools" option includes word processors such as MS Office or
  OpenOffice.org, but also tools such as Adobe Acrobat (for PDF) or
  GIMP (for images), or WYSIWYG DTP tools such as QuarkXPress,
  PageMaker or Scribus, or WYSIWYG HTML editors such as FrontPage,
  Dreamweaver or KompoZer.

11. What Git interfaces, implementations, frontends and tools do you use?
    * git (core) commandline
    * JGit (Java implementation)
    * library / language binding (e.g. Grit or Dulwich)
    * Cogito (DEPRECATED)
    * Easy Git
    * Pyrite
    * StGIT
    * Guilt
    * TopGit
    * pg aka Patchy Git (DEPRECATED)
    * gitk
    * git gui
    * QGit
    * GitView
    * Giggle
    * GitNub
    * GitX
    * git-cola
    * tig
    * TortoiseGit
    * Git Extensions
    * git-cheetah
    * git-instaweb
    * git-sh
    * Gitosis (as admin)
    * repo (to manage multiple repositories)
    * editor/IDE VC integration
    * filemanager integration / shell extension (any)
    * graphical history viewer/browser (any)
    * graphical commit tool (any)
    * graphical diff tool
    * graphical merge tool
    * graphical blame or pickaxe tool
    * my own scripts
    * Other (please specify)

Here graphics diff tool means tools such as Kompare, and graphical merge tool means tools such as Meld and KDiff3. Those answers include graphical merge and diff tools used by programmers editors and IDEs.

"graphical history browser (any)" covers tools such as gitk, QGit, Giggle, tig etc., but also built-in git commands such as "git log --graph" and "git show-branch". If you use one of mentioned tools _as_ history browser, mark both a tool and "graphical history browser (any)"; if you use some graphical history viewer not listed here, please both mark this answer and specify it in the "other tool" answer.

Similarly for other answers marked "(any)".

12. What tool (or kind of tool) would you like to have Git support in?
    (e.g. IDE, RAD, editors, continuous integration, software hosting,
     bugtracker, merge tool...)
    (this includes language bindings and Git (re)implementations)

    free-form essay

13. Which git hosting site do you use for your projects?
    (Please check only hosting sites where you publish/push to)
    * repo.or.cz
    * GitHub
    * Gitorious
    * Savannah
    * SourceForge
    * Assembla
    * Unfuddle
    * kernel.org
    * freedesktop.org
    * Alioth
    * Fedora Hosted
    * git hosting site for set of related projects (e.g. OLPC)
    * generic site without git support
    * self hosted
    * Other (please specify)

14. How do you fetch/get changes from upstream repositories?
    * git protocol (e.g. git://example.com/repo.git)
    * ssh (e.g. ssh://example.com/repo.git or user@example.com:/repo.git)
    * http (e.g. http://example.com/repo.git)
    * rsync (DEPRECATED) (e.g. rsync://example.com/repo.git)
    * same filesystem (e.g. /path/to/repo.git or file:///path/to/repo.git)
    * via git-bundle
    * foreign SCM import / script like git-svn
    * Other, please specify

This question asks about how do you get changes (updates) from projects you follow into your local repository. It is not about how do you get latest version of Git.

Fetching (or rather cloning) via bundle could mean that project publishes ready for download bundles to reduce traffic and load on server (download of bundle can be resumed, git-clone currently cannot; one can also distribute bundle using P2P).

15. How do you publish/propagate your changes?
    * push
    * pull request (+ any form of announcement / notification)
    * format-patch + email
    * format-patch + other (e.g. reviewboard, issue tracker or forum)
    * git bundle
    * git-svn (to Subversion repository)
    * git-p4 (to Perforce repository)
    * foreign SCM interface (other than mentioned above)
    * other - please specify

Publishing via bundle could mean sending bundle via email, or posting it on review board (or forum).

16. How often do you use the following forms of git commands
    or extra git tools?

    	          never | rarely | sometimes | often
      git add -i / -p 				
      git add -u / -A 				
      git am 				
      git am -i 				
      git apply 				
      git apply --whitespace=fix 				
      git archive 				
      git bisect 				
      git bisect run <cmd> 				
      git annotate 				
      git gui blame 				
      git blame 				
      git blame -L <start>,<end> etc. 				
      git bundle 				
      git cherry 				
      git cherry-pick 				
      git cherry-pick -n / --no-commit 				
      git citool 				
      git clean 				
      git add + git commit 				
      git commit -a 				
      git commit <file>... 				
      git commit -i <file>... 				
      git commit --amend 				
      git cvsexportcommit 				
      git cvsserver 				
      git daemon 				
      git daemon (pushing enabled) 				
      git difftool 				
      git ... --dirstat 				
      git fetch [<options>] 				
      git filter-branch 				
      git format-patch 				
      git grep 				
      git imap-send 				
      git instaweb 				
      git log --grep/--author/... 				
      git log -S<string> (pickaxe search) 				
      git log --graph 				
      git merge 				
      git merge with strategy 				
      git merge --squash 				
      git mergetool 				
      git pull (no remote) 				
      git pull --rebase [<options>] 				
      git pull <remote> 				
      git pull <URL> <ref> 				
      git push 				

This question (and its continuation below) is entirely optional.

17. How often do you use the following forms of git commands
    or extra git tools? (continued)

    	          never | rarely | sometimes | often
      git relink 				
      git rebase 				
      git rebase -i 				
      git reflog or git log -g 				
      git remote 				
      git remote update 				
      git request-pull 				
      git revert 				
      git send-email 				
      git show-branch 				
      git shortlog 				
      git shortlog -s 				
      git stash 				
      git stash --keep-index 				
      git submodule 				
      git subtree 				
      git svn 				
      git whatchanged 				
      git gui 				
      gitk 				

Explanation: "Rarely" means that you use mentioned form of command
either rarely, or you have used it only a few times.

Questions 16 and 17 (its continuation) are purely optional (as are the rest of questions in survey). If you don't feel like filling this questions, please skip them.

Note: git-subtree is managed out of tree, as a separate project (not
in git.git repository, not even in contrib/ area).

18. Which of the following features have you used?
    * git bundle (off-line transport)
    * eol conversion (crlf)
    * gitattributes
    * mergetool and/or difftool, or custom diff/merge driver
    * submodules (subprojects)
    * subtree merge (optionally git-subtree)
    * separate worktree / core.worktree
    * multiple worktrees (git-new-worktree)
    * alternates mechanism (sharing object database)
    * stash (optionally "git stash --keep-index")
    * shallow clone (e.g. "git clone --depth=<n>")
    * detaching HEAD (e.g. "git checkout HEAD^0")
    * interactive rebase (small scale history editing)
    * interactive commit / per-hunk comitting / partial commit
    * commit message templates
    * git-filter-branch or equivalent (large history rewriting)
    * bisect (optionally "git bisect run <script>")
    * committing with dirty tree (keeping some changes uncommitted)
    * non-default hooks (from contrib/hooks/ or other)
    * shell completion of commands
    * git-aware shell prompt
    * git aliases, shell aliases for git, or own git scripts
    * Other, please specify

19. What features would you like implemented in Git?
    What features are you missing?

    free-form essay

EXAMPLES: partial / subtree checkout, commit annotations aka
git-notes, refs/replace mechanism, "smart" HTTP protocol (git via
HTTP), resomable clone/fetch, lazy clone (on demand downloading of
objects), wholesame directory rename detection, syntax highlighting
and/or side-by-side diffs in gitweb, graphical merge tool integrated
with git-gui, etc.  

What you think of Git 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
20. Overall, how happy are you with Git?
    * unhappy
    * not so happy
    * happy
    * very happy
    * completely ecstatic

21. In you opinion, which areas in Git needs improvement?
    Please state your preference.
	         don't need | a little | some | much
      user-interface 				
      documentation 				
      performance 				
      more features 				
      tools (e.g. GUI) 				
      localization (translation) 				

Changes in Git (since year ago, or since you started using it)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
22. Did you participate in previous Git User's Surveys?
    * in 2006
    * in 2007
    * in 2008

23. How do you compare current version with version from year ago?
    * better
    * no changes
    * worse
    * cannot say

Documentation. Getting help, staying in touch.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
24. How useful have you found the following forms of Git documentation?

	            never used | not useful | somewhat useful | useful
      Git Wiki 				
      on-line help 				
      help distributed with git 				

* Git Wiki can be found at http://git.or.cz/gitwiki
* on-line help includes, among others, Git Homepage
  (http://git-scm.com) and "Git Community Book"
  (http://book.git-scm.com)
* help distributed with git include manpages, manual, tutorials,
  HOWTO, release notes, technical documentation, contrib/examples/

25. Have you tried to get Git help from other people?
    * Yes
    * No

26. What channel did you use to request help?
    * git mailing list (git@vger.kernel.org)
    * "Git for Human Beings" Google Group
    * IRC (#git)
    * IRC (other git/SCM related, e.g. #github)
    * request in blog post or on wiki
    * asking git guru/colleague
    * project mailing list, or IRC, or forum
    * Twitter or other microblogging platform
    * instant messenging (IM) like XMPP/Jabber
    * StackOverflow
    * other (please specify)

27. If yes, did you get these problems resolved quickly and to your liking?
    * Yes
    * No
    * Somewhat

28. Which communication channels do you use?
    Do you read the mailing list, or watch IRC channel?
    * git@vger.kernel.org (main)
    * Git for Human Beings (Google Group)
    * msysGit
    * #git IRC channel
    * #github or #gitorious IRC channel
    * #revctrl IRC channel

About this survey. Open forum
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
29. How did you heard about this Git User's Survey?
    * git mailing list
    * git-related mailing list (msysGit, Git for Human Beings, ...)
    * mailing list or forum of some project
    * #git IRC channel topic
    * announcement on IRC channel
    * git homepage
    * git wiki
    * git hosting site
    * software-related web site
    * news web site or social news site
    * blog
    * other kind of web site
    * Twitter or other microblogging platform
    * other - please specify

30. What other comments or suggestions do you have that are not
    covered by the questions above?

    free-form essay

If you have cookies enabled, you can always submit partially filled survey, and return to your answers at later time, completing it later.

......................................................................

Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> writes:

Could we please have "None of the above" here ;-)?  Just kidding.

Is there a reason why this particular out-of-tree script was singled out, and no other goodies are listed?

Which version was that? v1.5.6? v1.6.0? I think you would want to explicitly say v1.6.0 (mid Aug 2008), and it might even make sense to link to a list of changes since then (relnotes to 1.6.[123], at least, but perhaps more condensed).

I see you dropped "How did you hear about git" from the questionaire. It was a good way to spot which response was from Linus who answered "I wrote it" to the question ;-).

On Fri, 3 July 2009, Junio C Hamano wrote:

I guess from "Just kidding" comment that you thought about "None of the above" answer as not having git installed... which of course doesn't make sense if one is answering "Git _User's_ Survey 2009".

But this comment brought to mind other legitimate "None of the above"
namely
  * preinstalled / sysadmin job
for the situation where either Git was preinstalled on system one
uses to work with git, or installing and upgrading programs like git
is system administrator job.

BTW. what is the situation with msysGit? Times ago WinGit was in "source script" category, as installing git meant compiling it, and then installing just build version.

Originally git-subtree was submitted for inclusion, and if I remember correctly later was considered for 'contrib/', but it was decided that it would be better if it mature out-of-tree. I still think (correct me if I am wrong) that git-subtree is meant to be in git core, similar to "git remote" and "git submodule".

Good catch!

Unfortunately links have to be plain text links only, as Survs.com currently does not provide rich layout/language for 'text' element.

It was dropped mainly because it doesn't, in my opinion, gives us back some valuable information, and I tried to cut number of questions to 30.

Also git is not news now (it was born 3.5 years ago); it has wide enough use base. We don't need to advertise git more (I think), and searching best avenues for that. "How did you heard about this survey?" would help to concentrate on best announcement channels... of course if we did repeating "Git User's Survey" next year.

Thank you very much for all your comments!

2009/7/3 Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>:

I'm not sure what you mean. I think the best place to announce these kinds of things is through a post in an official blog.

It's a bit complicated and missing some, how about:
8. How do/did you obtain Git?
 * package management (apt, yum, etc.)
 * binary package or installer (.deb, .exe) <-
 * source package or script (deb-src, src.rpm)
 * source tarball
 * pull from (main) repository

- 9. What operating system do you use Git on?
+ 9. On which operating system(s) do you use Git?

- 13. Which git hosting site do you use for your projects?
+ 13. Which hosting site(s) do you use for your projects?

Let's leave room for git haters too:
 * I hate it

- 21. In you opinion, which areas in Git needs improvement?
+ 21. In you opinion, which areas of Git need improvement?

- 23. How do you compare current version with version from year ago?
+ 23. How do you compare the current version with the one from one year ago?

"If yes" on 27 is out of context:

- 25. Have you tried to get Git help from other people?
+ 25. Have you tried to get help regarding Git from other people?
26. If yes, did you get these problems resolved quickly and to your liking?
27. What channel did you use to request help?

- 28. Which communication channels do you use?
+ 28. Which communication channel(s) do you use?

- 29. How did you heard about this Git User's Survey?
+ 29. How did you hear about this survey?

- 30. What other comments or suggestions do you have that are not
covered by the questions above?
+ 30. Any other comments or suggestions?

Best regards.

On Sat, Jul 04, 2009 at 02:19:25AM +0300, Felipe Contreras wrote:

Umm, let's not.

If they hate it, they'll be in the "unhappy" category. And if they hate it, I doubt they'll be filling out this survey.

I've heard nothing but unhelpful, uneducated, and stubborn words from people who "hate git". They usually have nothing productive to say and spend their time complaining about really petty things like the fact that they have to paste in a SHA-1 every now and then. Worse still, they almost never have constructive criticism and thus will always be upset.

Personally, I couldn't care less to hear what they have to say. The only thing worse then the haters are the ones who actually believe that they would hate hg less (even when they've never tried hg!).

Let's not encourage them by including including "I hate git" in our survey.

No thanks.

- 21. In you opinion, which areas of Git need improvement?
+ 21. In your opinion, which areas of Git need improvement?
         ^^^^

Have fun,

On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 4:26 AM, David Aguilar<davvid@gmail.com> wrote:

That's a good point, I just thought it would be nice to spot them; which would be easy if they answer "I hate it". But also, if there's an extreme positive (completely ecstatic) I thought there should be an extreme negative, just in case.

Probably not important at all.

Cheers.

On Sat, 4 July 2009, Felipe Contreras wrote:

[...]

Hmmm...

On the one hand side it would be better, I think, to have balanced set of answers, with neutral position in the middle, and unhappy/happy along the axis.

On the other hand that was the set of answers used in previous surveys, so if we change it it would be harder to compare against surveys in past years.

On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 1:43 AM, Jakub Narebski<jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:

That's another good point, I don't have a strong opinion about this, and now I don't think there's any good reason for changing it.

Cheers.

On Sat, 4 July 2009, Felipe Contreras wrote:

The problem is that there isn't "official blog" for Git.  There is
gitster's (Junio C Hamano, git maintainer) blog at
  http://gitster.livejournal.com/
there is yours 'A git blog looking to be official' at
  http://gitlog.wordpress.com/

Let me quote appropriate question from "Git User's Survey 2009" which lists possible announcement mechanisms I did think of:

  29. How did you hear about this Git User's Survey?
    * git mailing list
    * git-related mailing list (msysGit, Git for Human Beings, ...)
    * mailing list or forum of some project
    * #git IRC channel topic
    * announcement on IRC channel
    * git homepage
    * git wiki
    * git hosting site
    * software-related web site
    * news web site or social news site
    * blog
    * other kind of web site
    * Twitter or other microblogging platform
    * other - please specify

I will send announcement to Git mailing list (i.e. here) using
"[ANNOUNCE]" in email subject, which means that 'GIT Mailing List
RSS Feeds' script would pick it up for 'announce' feed
  http://gitrss.q42.co.uk/announce.rss
which means that Ohloh would have it in "News" section for Git project:
  http://www.ohloh.net/p/git
(and it is easy to add announcement in "Journal Entries" at Ohloh).

I can add announcement about Git User's Survey 2009 at Git Wiki and
create page about it at
  http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitSurvey2009
I can ask Scott Chacon to put announcement on Git Homepage at
  http://git-scm.com

What other places to ask to put note about this survey? For past surveys I was sending announcement to mailing list of projects using git (http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitProjects)... well, at least those which didn't require subscribing to mailing list before postiting on it (and even that for some cases can be worked around by sending announcement via GMane). But with number of projects using git so large nowadays I don't think it is good approach...

It might be better formulation. Currently updates using automatic updates (apt, yum, YaST, Package Manager) is split into two: binary package for distributions using binary packages for update (most distributions: Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, SuSE) and source package for source based distributions (like Gentoo or Sourcemage).

I will think about it (and about adding "sysadmin job" answer too).

Thanks, this is better.

Well, on one hand side among possible answers there is "generic site without git support". On the other hand this question is about where you host your projects that you use git for.

I think I'll leave "git" in question, but use "site(s)".

Well, "I hate it" is "unhappy". But on the other hand I'd like to have here set of answers with 'neutral' in the middle, and symmetric around this middle answer. Perhaps:

    * unhappy
    * not so happy
    * average
    * somewhat happy
    * very happy

Also I agree with Junio that I'd rather git haters didn't answer this
survey...
 

Thanks.
 

Ooops.  I'll fix it.

Thanks
 

I'll fix grammar, but I'd leave "Git User's Survey" here.

Perhaps.

Thanks a lot for your review and comments!

On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 1:40 AM, Jakub Narebski<jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:

I guess Junio's blog is the most official one ATM, but I'll post it on mine too.

And as I said before, if anyone wants to post in gitlog.wordpress.com I can give you permissions; I don't want it to be *my* blog.

I would recommend against posting on client projects; IMHO that's a bit spammy.

How about contacting big hosting sites; sourceforge, github, gitorious, etc. ?

On Sun, 5 July 2009, Felipe Contreras wrote:

[...]

I'll take you on that when announcing start of "Git User's Survey 2009".

[...]

I think that this year I would leave project's mailing list alone

Last year I contacted Petr Baudis about putting announcement on repo.or.cz, IIRC J.H. 'Warthog9' about git.kernel.org, and appropriate admins for GitHub and Gitorious. Last year Sourceforge didn't have, I think, support for git; do you know who to contact about putting announcement there? I tried also to contact Assembla and Unfuddle, without success.

I can try again to contact LWN.net; what other places we can put announcement?

Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:

Sorry, don't.

 - Even if you are pretending to be a git community member, you are merely
   a phoney if you are not reading it.

 - If you want to be up-to-date with what is happening in the community,
   you should be reading it.  Any important announcement always will
   appear there.

That would be an official blog. I do not use mine that way, and nobody has to follow it in order to function better in the git land.

It's like expecting Linus to announce the kernel release in his blog.

Not going to happen. The official channel of this community has always been this list.

I'm OK if somebody declares that he will use his blog to relay important announcements from this list, to help blog minded people to follow it instead of reading the list.

But that won't be me.

On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 9:30 PM, Junio C Hamano<gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

I know there's no official git blog, I've tried to change that, but so far that hasn't happened. IMHO for now the most popular git blog(s) should announce the survey, I'll announce it at gitlog.wordpress.com but it is far from being popular.

I understand your position for not making your personal blog the official one; I wouldn't do that on my personal blog either (felipec.wordpress.com) that's why I created a separate blog for that, where you, or anyone else, can do official git posts instead of on their personal blog.

Cheers.

On Sun, 5 July 2009, Felipe Contreras wrote:

There is always http://gitrss.q42.co.uk/announce.rss which extracts "[ANNOUNCE]" emails from git mailing list into an RSS feed, for those who prefer this way of watching for git news.

It's just that somehow for "Git Development Community" a mailing list is enough. We don't have official git blog, we don't have bugtracker (issue tracker). At the beginning git didn't even had _homepage_.

A propos blogs: Elijah Newren writes from time to time about git on http://blogs.gnome.org/newren/ ; I think this blog is in a few GNOME planets, so if he were so kind as put announcement there when the time comes... It would be good to have such announcement on some blog which is in Perl blog planet (Perlsphere and/or Planet Perl Iron Man), and similarly for other communities which rely on blogs (KDE, Ruby: anyone?).

There is also http://www.versioncontrolblog.com (which is currently off-line, so I can't check who to contact).

On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 10:45 PM, Jakub Narebski<jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:

That's nice, although relatively unknown it seems.

How do you know that? Have you already asked that question in a survey already? ;)

As an experiment I added http://gitrss.q42.co.uk/announce.rss to my Google Reader, and through some tricks you can actually see how many people are subscribed to that feed: 26. For reference gitlog.wordpress.com has 28, and Planet IM, a relatively unknown planet: 844.

And I have many friends who don't follow git's mailing list, so no, I don't think a mailing list is enough for official announcements.

It would be interesting to clone http://gitrss.q42.co.uk/announce.rss into gitlog.wordpress.com... I'll see if I can find a way to do that :)

Yeap, posting on planets will get a lot of attention.

Cheers.

Felipe Contreras wrote:

The git developer community flourishes without official blogs, and it did so even before we had a webpage. In truth, I visit the mailing list archives more often than I visit the webpage. It doesn't *need* a blog (or a forum, or a tracker, or whatever), but some people might find such things helpful. Personally, I'm a huge fan of having it all in one place.

There are no forums suitable for everyone who are interested in git development. We can (sort of) rely on package maintainers for the various distros to keep track of groundbreaking changes. People who compile from source are sort of on their own if they don't want to follow the mailing list or in some other way find out what's going on. I don't have a problem with that, and it matches what I'd have expected myself if I was building something from source.

On Mon, 6 July 2009, Andreas Ericsson wrote:

People who compile from source have RelNotes since 1.5.0. They are here for a reason...

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Andreas Ericsson<ae@op5.se> wrote:

I'm not saying a blog is needed for git to flourish.

I'm saying a blog would help to send official messages.

I'm not talking about people that compile git, I'm talking about the bulk of the users; the ones who use package management to install git and most of the time don't even know which version they are running nor what new features are available.

In any case, you think there's no need for a blog, I think there is, how about the rest of the users? Isn't that a question suitable for asking in the survey?

Felipe Contreras wrote:

Not really. If you feel there's a need for a blog, just start one and then maintain it. Problem sorted, and 3000 people needn't bother to even think about it ;-)

If you want a 100% official git blog, then that'll be up to Junio to do and I'm sure he will if he wants to and think there's a need for it. Personally I think it's useful to get feedback on what people want the actual software to do, and much less useful to get feedback on how the community should be managed. Mostly since the community will manage itself so long as there's interest in it, and it will do so better without input from people who aren't actually in it. It's for that precise reason noone should be allowed to make rules they don't have to obey themselves.

Hi,

On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 1:45 PM, Jakub Narebski<jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:

Sure, I'd be happy to put an announcement in my blog.

On Fri, Jul 03, 2009 at 01:30:22AM +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:

There was a surprising amout of 12% of the users picking that in 2008, and confusion about why they do so. Could this be split up, eg. like this?

    * my own scripts (for daily commandline use)
    * my own scripts (for special tasks)

bye, Martin

On Sat, 4 Jul 2009, Martin Renold wrote:

By "for daily commandline use" you mean writing [partial] porcelain, don't you? It might be good idea to split it... on the other hand number of possible answers for this question is quite large (but IMHO not unmanageable large) already.

On Wed, 8 July 2009, Erik Faye-Lund wrote:

Yes, it should be "local filesystem" (or even "via filesystem"; it could have been mounted network share). Thanks for noticing.

IMHO it is no "pulling from upstream". Anything that includes something other than git-fetch / git-clone / git-remote-update is of no interest to this question. I'll try to explain it in the comments.