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Gitless: a version control system

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Re: Gitless: a version control system

#51

Post by cm3 »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #45
cm3 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

git and hg are somewhere between Subversion and Darcs/Pijul. You kinda deal with individual patches (commits) but not quite as prominently as in Darcs/Pijul. It's all a compromise, and even Subversion gained merge features, leaning more into the git/hg realm. Tracking patches has huge advantages, especially in open source work, whereas it's not really needed if you just commit to master/trunk all the time and merge w…

> You kinda deal with individual patches (commits) but not quite as prominently as in Darcs/Pijul. Darcs patches and git commits are markedly different. A git commit is a snapshot. A Darcs patch is a set of changes (that is, the difference between two snapshot). Any similarity necessarily comes from the ability to recover a snapshot from sets of changes, or deduce a set of changes from two snapshots. As far as I know…

I was referring to the fact that in git you can cherry-pick a commit as the similar mechanism.

Re: Gitless: a version control system

#52

Post by zajd »

tiborsaas wrote: post #21
chvid wrote: post #7

To me the really bad thing about git is its command-line interface. It has extremely verbose messages (writes out a lot of stuff that you don't need to know) and common use cases often requires multiple steps (ie. add, commit, push if you just want to send a change from your work machine a github repository). Compare this to subversion which is much less verbose, and in general just have one operation pr. use case.

I disagree. It's one of the best command line tools I've seen. It detects errors, gives you suggestions and you can get along with a few basic commands. Yes, there are multiple steps, but that's okay because it can't figure out your intentions. Look: http://imgur.com/xY8dKWD no verbosity here and this is 99% of my git workflow. Working in a team is more tricky, but you should use and IDE with built in git support. If…

It's simplicity and ubiquity are the only reason we keep seeing absurd programs like Gitless put forth. Imagine if someone came out with someone that "fixed the warts of QT" that was just a wrapper around QT. It's a joke.

It's coffeescript vs javascript all over again and we saw how that played out.

Don't like how git works? contribute. Don't make some stupid command line utility that just adds another entire layer of abstraction on top because people don't want to take an hour to read about git internals.

Re: Gitless: a version control system

#53

Post by Mithaldu »

okket wrote: post #2

See also discussion about the Gitless paper: "Purposes, Concepts, Misfits, and a Redesign of Git" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12612333 (1 day ago, 106 comments)

And it hits the most important point of: Gitless tries to do away with the staging area, thus completely misunderstands Git.

Re: Gitless: a version control system

#54

Post by sametmax »

tiborsaas wrote: post #21
chvid wrote: post #7

To me the really bad thing about git is its command-line interface. It has extremely verbose messages (writes out a lot of stuff that you don't need to know) and common use cases often requires multiple steps (ie. add, commit, push if you just want to send a change from your work machine a github repository). Compare this to subversion which is much less verbose, and in general just have one operation pr. use case.

I disagree. It's one of the best command line tools I've seen. It detects errors, gives you suggestions and you can get along with a few basic commands. Yes, there are multiple steps, but that's okay because it can't figure out your intentions. Look: http://imgur.com/xY8dKWD no verbosity here and this is 99% of my git workflow. Working in a team is more tricky, but you should use and IDE with built in git support. If…

This is not objective. Git CMD has terrible flaws that are easily spotted as soon as you start teaching git, because you can see people struggling on difficulties purely created by a bad design.

As a professional trainer, here are the most commong problems:

- git checkout does so many different things. Git check file, git checkout branch, git checkout commit all do different stuff, and don't get me started on the option flags.

- git is context dependant. If you don't know the context, espcially the state your repo is in, you will struggle. And nothing in the tool gives you enough context if you don't explicitly ask for it, which supposes you need to know you need it, and what "it" is.

- branch switching is a hard. see article.

- stashing is dangerous. I've seen many students loosing work with a stash pop requiring a merge which ended badly.

- the whole syntax is impossible to discover, even for very common tasks: git checkout HEAD^ /file/path, git rm --cached, etc.

- git assumes you know what you are doing. Which means it let you destroy history with rebase, loose stuff with stash pop, create detached head, make force push, and all it all put yourself in many situations a beginer won't understand, and above all won't need.

Now I don't blame git designers for those. They made the tool they wanted to use.

What we need is a good UI on top of that. It can solve 99% of those problems.

The github one is not so bad compared to all the ones I tried (yes I tried yours), but it's still not it. What you need is someone that look at the most done tasks and questions, and provide safe, fast buttons for that.

Re: Gitless: a version control system

#55

Post by sametmax »

zajd wrote: post #52
tiborsaas wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. It's one of the best command line tools I've seen. It detects errors, gives you suggestions and you can get along with a few basic commands. Yes, there are multiple steps, but that's okay because it can't figure out your intentions. Look: http://imgur.com/xY8dKWD no verbosity here and this is 99% of my git workflow. Working in a team is more tricky, but you should use and IDE with built in git support. If…

It's simplicity and ubiquity are the only reason we keep seeing absurd programs like Gitless put forth. Imagine if someone came out with someone that "fixed the warts of QT" that was just a wrapper around QT. It's a joke. It's coffeescript vs javascript all over again and we saw how that played out. Don't like how git works? contribute. Don't make some stupid command line utility that just adds another entire layer o…

Now, this is a UI problem, you don't need to change git, you just need something higher level.

Git is fine the way it is, but it targets power users. Most people don't need that power.

In that sense, gitless has a proper approach even if I don't like the result.

Re: Gitless: a version control system

#56

Post by pqdbr »

I highly recommend GitX-dev, which is a free, open-source GUI for Git on the Mac. https://rowanj.github.io/gitx/

The ability to stage/unstage individual lines using a graphical interface is really nice, and after some years using it I can't think me going without it anymore.

Nowadays I only use the command line when I want to do interactive rebase.

Re: Gitless: a version control system

#57

Post by zajd »

sametmax wrote: post #55
zajd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simplicity and ubiquity are the only reason we keep seeing absurd programs like Gitless put forth. Imagine if someone came out with someone that "fixed the warts of QT" that was just a wrapper around QT. It's a joke. It's coffeescript vs javascript all over again and we saw how that played out. Don't like how git works? contribute. Don't make some stupid command line utility that just adds another entire layer o…

Now, this is a UI problem, you don't need to change git, you just need something higher level. Git is fine the way it is, but it targets power users. Most people don't need that power. In that sense, gitless has a proper approach even if I don't like the result.

I tend to agree with you that most people don't need that power but I think the problem is just that it IS a CLI interface, not that it's a particularly bad one. A GUI is the perfect tool to deal with discoverability and providing an easier interface for non-technical users. A CLI wrapper is just making things more confusing. I don't really understand what problem gitless seems to be solving...

Re: Gitless: a version control system

#58

Post by ms4720 »

tiborsaas wrote: post #21
chvid wrote: post #7

To me the really bad thing about git is its command-line interface. It has extremely verbose messages (writes out a lot of stuff that you don't need to know) and common use cases often requires multiple steps (ie. add, commit, push if you just want to send a change from your work machine a github repository). Compare this to subversion which is much less verbose, and in general just have one operation pr. use case.

I disagree. It's one of the best command line tools I've seen. It detects errors, gives you suggestions and you can get along with a few basic commands. Yes, there are multiple steps, but that's okay because it can't figure out your intentions. Look: http://imgur.com/xY8dKWD no verbosity here and this is 99% of my git workflow. Working in a team is more tricky, but you should use and IDE with built in git support. If…

Or the original syntax for tar

Re: Gitless: a version control system

#59

Post by mbrock »

NKCSS wrote: post #24

I wonder why there is no context-aware vcs; e.g. one that understanding the language and resolve diffs at a functional level. Would make change tracking and merging so much easier. Alternative would be to split each function into a separate file, for C# that would mean partials and the compiler just joins them.

Git is intentionally stupid about file contents to make it simple and robust.

Smalltalk has some systems like you describe. They're integrated with the compiler and Smalltalk makes that easy.

Otherwise I think it's mostly that such systems are lots of work to make and maintain. Treating files as plain text has huge benefits when you consider simplicity and flexibility.

The real "UNIX philosophy" is "worse is better": simpler, quicker, finished solutions are more likely to flourish (except X11).

Re: Gitless: a version control system

#60

Post by nerdponx »

tiborsaas wrote: post #21
chvid wrote: post #7

To me the really bad thing about git is its command-line interface. It has extremely verbose messages (writes out a lot of stuff that you don't need to know) and common use cases often requires multiple steps (ie. add, commit, push if you just want to send a change from your work machine a github repository). Compare this to subversion which is much less verbose, and in general just have one operation pr. use case.

I disagree. It's one of the best command line tools I've seen. It detects errors, gives you suggestions and you can get along with a few basic commands. Yes, there are multiple steps, but that's okay because it can't figure out your intentions. Look: http://imgur.com/xY8dKWD no verbosity here and this is 99% of my git workflow. Working in a team is more tricky, but you should use and IDE with built in git support. If…

You don't think that the "git push" output includes a lot of verbose tehnical junk not meaningful to most users?
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