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Git is too hard

changelog.com

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Re: Git is too hard

#81

Post by Tor3 »

wazoox wrote: post #62
Tor3 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed - I started to use version control back with SCCS somewhen in the early nineties, and RCS, CVS, Subversion, ClearCase, some Microsoft horror with a name I can't recall, and a few others. My conclusion is exactly the same as yours: " Git is the simplest version control system I've ever used. " And it also improved my overview over what happens and has happened in the past - I can jump back in for stuff I haven'…

The version control system your subconscious mind recoils in horror from is the dreaded Visual SourceSafe , one of the worst-named product ever.

That's possibly the one.. I worked for a year on a customer's site, and the source we delivered had to be put into their MS VC every time we delivered it. The major pain was that the namespace was flat.. you couldn't have more than one file in the whole tree called "Makefile" or "ChangeLog", for example.. so we made a transformation tool to make every file name unique before it got pushed into the version control system, and a reverse tool which transformed back when you checked it out, so that one could build the software.

Re: Git is too hard

#82

Post by KSteffensen »

japgolly wrote: post #73
Tor3 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed - I started to use version control back with SCCS somewhen in the early nineties, and RCS, CVS, Subversion, ClearCase, some Microsoft horror with a name I can't recall, and a few others. My conclusion is exactly the same as yours: " Git is the simplest version control system I've ever used. " And it also improved my overview over what happens and has happened in the past - I can jump back in for stuff I haven'…

Oh wow, ClearCase. That's a blast from the past that I'd forgotten even existed. CC was the stuff of nightmares.

A blast from the past that some of us still have to use on a daily basis, sadly.

Re: Git is too hard

#83

Post by zingermc »

ramraj07 wrote: post #38
dimgl wrote: post #6

I don't agree at all. Git is the simplest version control system I've ever used. The concept of merging, rebasing, cherry-picking, and resetting works so naturally that I'm basically going to expect this level of ease of use from any VCS I use going forward. That being said, I know there are some who have trouble with Git. But IMO it isn't because Git is hard, but because they don't have to truly understand Git to us…

I'm not an idiot, but I don't fully understand git. I am coding for a living, and I use git every day. I probably could sit down for a couple of days and fully understand how git works, but I've never needed it, I understand how basic git operations work, and I stay away from commands that I don't understand. With GitHub desktop you don't need to open the command line for any standard operations, I only need to use t…

I've definitely been the victim of my own git hubris.

Once, when leaving a job, I decided to copy all of my local WIP branches to the server.

I whipped out this fancy --mirror option I had just heard of:

  git push --mirror $remote
Surprise! All branches on the remote repo got wiped. My local refs replaced the refs on the remote.

Somehow I found the right commits floating around in the git ether. I was able to recreate the branches, but I had to recreate their names by reading the commit log.

Did I mention this happened on my way out the door from a job? In retrospect, I shouldn't have panicked so much -- there were daily backups -- but the sheer terror I felt has made me read the man pages really closely to this day.

Re: Git is too hard

#84

Post by viraptor »

erik_seaberg wrote: post #45
tasubotadas wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you have never used Mercurial.

“How do I branch in Mercurial?” seems to have four long answers, and maybe a patch queue makes five? https://stevelosh.com/blog/2009/08/a-guide-to-branching-in-m...

You could easily write pages about local/remote branches, heads behaviour, etc. in git. Mercurial also gives you an extra option - bookmarks, but you don't have to use them at all.

The deeper explanation doesn't mean more complex system.

Re: Git is too hard

#85

Post by ghayes »

ramraj07 wrote: post #38
dimgl wrote: post #6

I don't agree at all. Git is the simplest version control system I've ever used. The concept of merging, rebasing, cherry-picking, and resetting works so naturally that I'm basically going to expect this level of ease of use from any VCS I use going forward. That being said, I know there are some who have trouble with Git. But IMO it isn't because Git is hard, but because they don't have to truly understand Git to us…

I'm not an idiot, but I don't fully understand git. I am coding for a living, and I use git every day. I probably could sit down for a couple of days and fully understand how git works, but I've never needed it, I understand how basic git operations work, and I stay away from commands that I don't understand. With GitHub desktop you don't need to open the command line for any standard operations, I only need to use t…

I'm not sure I follow your logic: why not take a few days to learn the fundamentals of git? I did that a few years back (and I'm not saying I read the source code, just learned about the base concepts from a few blogs and played around with some more advanced commands), and it has paid dividends _every single day for the last several years_. For example, I avoid tracking branches and have started using `git fetch`, `git merge --ff-only /`, `git reset --hard /` and `git push ` to push and pull remote code. Even these slightly lower level commands will start to help you understand what's going on behind the scenes and take the mystery out of, say, rebase conflicts.

Re: Git is too hard

#86

Post by ajuc »

dimgl wrote: post #6

I don't agree at all. Git is the simplest version control system I've ever used. The concept of merging, rebasing, cherry-picking, and resetting works so naturally that I'm basically going to expect this level of ease of use from any VCS I use going forward. That being said, I know there are some who have trouble with Git. But IMO it isn't because Git is hard, but because they don't have to truly understand Git to us…

The underyling concepts are fine, the problem with git for me is the inconsistent command line interface. Stuff I'm doing less often than once a month I have to check in the manual every time. And it's nothing inherently hard - stuff like removing one change from staging or cleaning up local branch to be exactly like remote. The interface just feels like stuff is arbitrarily assigned to different commands :)

Re: Git is too hard

#87

Post by aulin »

hannob wrote: post #17

I fully agree. I particularly think about this because I had some conversations with people from the open science community. It's really often where I'd like to tell them: "This problem, you really want to use something like git. Although... it's kinda hard to learn." There's a lot of workflows outside of software development or from people who develop software, but for whom software development is not their primary…

It's amazing how this often comes from people that's quite accustomed to spend a considerable amount of time in learning their tools, being it complex math, programming, scientific instrumentation, scientific type-setting. But when it comes to version control they expect it to be able to just use it without any effort. I believe git being hard is just an excuse to not change their current workflow.

Re: Git is too hard

#88

Post by nemetroid »

rusk wrote: post #14
dimgl wrote: post #6

I don't agree at all. Git is the simplest version control system I've ever used. The concept of merging, rebasing, cherry-picking, and resetting works so naturally that I'm basically going to expect this level of ease of use from any VCS I use going forward. That being said, I know there are some who have trouble with Git. But IMO it isn't because Git is hard, but because they don't have to truly understand Git to us…

I’d be inclined to disagree. I found the learning curve to be quite steep. When you’re used to having a centralised VCS hosted for you it can seem a bit of a chore to take on all this extra responsibility. Once you’re on top of it though it’s great I wouldn’t use anything else.

> When you’re used to having a centralised VCS hosted for you

I think this is the crucial part. Git will come off as difficult and strange if you're used to using a centralized VCS, and expect Git to work like it. But that isn't really indicative of Git's own complexity, just its differentness.

Re: Git is too hard

#89

Post by rusk »

oblio wrote: post #68
rusk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are numerous git svn cheat sheets ... this is literally one of the first things I learned. I’m kind of bewildered by this to be honest ... I don’t know how somebody with a technical qualification could have trouble with this ...

We shouldn't need a cheat sheet. We shouldn't need Linus's brain dump to be able to use a tool. The Git UI directly models the Git internal model and that's just bad design. It's a completely leaky abstraction. I can use git all right but the fact that I need about 20 different commands to do my job, 95% of them with extra parameters and almost all of them with names that don't reflect what I want to do from a functi…

I hope I never end up working with you bud. “Where is the code?” “Oh I’m sorry I couldn’t do it because it was hard can I still be paid please?”

Re: Git is too hard

#90

Post by rusk »

nemetroid wrote: post #88
rusk wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be inclined to disagree. I found the learning curve to be quite steep. When you’re used to having a centralised VCS hosted for you it can seem a bit of a chore to take on all this extra responsibility. Once you’re on top of it though it’s great I wouldn’t use anything else.

> When you’re used to having a centralised VCS hosted for you I think this is the crucial part. Git will come off as difficult and strange if you're used to using a centralized VCS, and expect Git to work like it. But that isn't really indicative of Git's own complexity, just its differentness.

But you are free to use Git in the old centralised way. You don’t have to get into workflows and stuff if you don’t want to. The , just as in the purely centralised case you are still reliant on a oracle but that’s okay in most cases.
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