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Things I hate about Git (2012)

stevebennett.me

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Re: Things I hate about Git (2012)

#31

Post by sigsergv »

Once you get the essence of git (objects, graph, commits as snapshots etc) everything becomes really easy. You don't need to memorize all command just need to understand some basic concepts.

And some points about the article. Git is a framework actually, you need some workflow to use it in a team. So git requires a lot of discipline from all team members. You can't just "commit" as in subversion, you must understand what are you doing. So you can't directly compare git with something like subversion. And git ≠ github.

Some points are valid: bad and unclear documentation, no "included" workflows, bad command line UI. Author also didn't mention authorship issues, it's a real pain.

Re: Things I hate about Git (2012)

#32

Post by lyall »

It's been discussed on HN before, but gitless[1] is worth checking out. They've taken a structured approach[2] to finding git's most confusing UX "idiosyncrasies" and tried to address them. As a user of regular old git I can't personally speak to how successful they've actually been but it's interesting nonetheless.

[1]: http://gitless.com/

[2]: https://people.csail.mit.edu/sperezde/oopsla16.pdf

Re: Things I hate about Git (2012)

#36

Post by dispose13432 »

thunderbong wrote: post #16
goerz wrote: post #11

All fair points. So what can we actually do about it?

Use something better? Like Fossil? I find Fossil way, way more friendly and useful for individual users and teams. http://fossil-scm.org/

But the major hosts don't support it.

Re: Things I hate about Git (2012)

#37

Post by isaac_is_goat »

wqweto wrote: post #4
ubernostrum wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, he and many git users enamored of his style are perfectly willing to be condescending to anyone who points out the problems. Which itself is a problem.

Is hg easier to use? Or any other DVCS not created by such a bad UX practitioner?

Hg is easier to use for mainly 2 reasons:

1. The UI is more consistent ie. the "update" command only does 1 thing updates your working directory to a specified state.

2. It doesn't have a pre-commit staging "index" like Git (or it at least doesn't expose it to the user. So workflow is a bit for straightforward ie. you don't need to constantly "add" files before you commit, it automatically does it for you.

Re: Things I hate about Git (2012)

#38

Post by [deleted] »

ivansavz wrote: post #18

Git is pretty difficult to learn, but the customizations it allows are amazing. To get a "fancy oneline log" output, add the following to your `~/.gitconfig` [alias] ll = log --graph --oneline --decorate --date=short --all --pretty=format:'%ad %h %Cgreen%an %Cred%d %Creset%s' then run git ll It's great when rebasing your way out of spaghetti-commitlog situations.

[deleted]

Re: Things I hate about Git (2012)

#39

Post by chj »

rileymat2 wrote: post #22

I have not had this problem recently because moved from Windows to Mac, but at some point about 8 years ago was the way git handled windows line endings was truly maddening.

To this day I never understand how to handle line endings correctly. I mean, when I have issues, I would need to google, and then forget again. Fortunately I don't have to work on windows that much.
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