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Oh Shit, Git

ohshitgit.com

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Re: Oh Shit, Git

#161

Post by wrycoder »

memorable wrote: post #116
koonsolo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with CVS, Subversion, Bazaar, Visual SourceSave, Team Foundation Version Control, Mercurial and Git. The worst systems are the Microsoft ones, but the one with the most complex interface is definitely Git. I would argue it won because of github. I'm using Git because of that, but still prefer Mercurial in every way.

I agree with this. Mercurial is cool, but if you need to convert your Mercurial project to Git to push to GitHub, then it's a fucking pain.

There is Sourcehut, which supports Hg.

Re: Oh Shit, Git

#162

Post by ogogmad »

toxik wrote: post #158
amelius wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good modern software always offers an undo option. Where is "git undo"?

Ah yes, the classic `rm --undo` saved me so many times. No, command-line interfaces rarely offer undo. The onus is on the user to not do irreversible things when they may need to be reversed. Git, coincidentally, does have something equivalent to undo history: the reflog.

"rm" was made in the '70s. Git was made in the '00s.

Re: Oh Shit, Git

#163

Post by agumonkey »

danjac wrote: post #4

Git is a reminder why even the best minds in software development sometimes really should talk to UX/UI people.

What I don't get is that the UX problem is not hard. I still like the underlying commit tree model a lot.. it's just some commands that are not clear enough (reset has 5 meanings and can backfire quickly). Maybe it's just retrocompatibility inertia.

Re: Oh Shit, Git

#164

Post by metaltyphoon »

canaus wrote: post #151
dahart wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find people are religious about being git cli purists […] we have state of the art GUI tools I would humbly suggest you avoid framing it that way, even if you believe it’s true. From someone who is only sometimes a cli advocate, my immediate assumption is that your opinion here may be formed out of naïveté and a bit of fear of the cli. Please note I’m actually quite a fan of using various GUI tools for basic git…

I'd really like to know what mess people make when they don't rebase. I've found that using merge gives a readable trail of when something was merged, whether that be from a branch's original branch, or if you're merging into another branch. Rebasing just seems to cause a lot more headache when something doesn't go perfectly correct in between commits.

Interesting take. If anyone care to actually learn how git works when rebasing, then it becomes much simpler. I always rebase and in 10 years of professional use, never once had a problem with it. That doesn’t mean other people don’t.

Re: Oh Shit, Git

#165

Post by xwdv »

modriano wrote: post #149
xwdv wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I only use the CLI (because I learned git before GUIs got useable), but my mental representation of branches and commits is *graph*ical, and most of the git user guides and tutorials I see use a graphical representation to communicate git concepts. I imagine it would have been easier to learn git's functionality if I had an interface to git that was closer to my mental representation.

This might seem obvious but have you tried changing your mental representation?

Commits are nothing more than a series of actions to apply.

Re: Oh Shit, Git

#166

Post by CobaltFire »

tharkun__ wrote: post #147
CobaltFire wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a group of people supposedly primarily in the SV area this is a scary comment thread. I learned to drive stick in the Bay Area and the way everyone I know there drives stick on an incline is to use the parking brake with a second hand when letting off the brake and letting out the clutch. Now, when you get good you can stop doing this for most, but for really steep streets (I now live in San Diego and we have a c…

You should go drive a bit in (some parts of) Spain! Not sure if something like this exists where you are. Imagine: Small towns, really narrow one way streets with foot traffic and underground parking. Getting out of some of those underground car parks is scary stuff! You get onto a steep incline to get out of the car park but you come around a corner onto that. Cars might be coming down towards you at this point and…

I haven't been to Europe but I did live in Japan, which has some... interesting roads.

Re: Oh Shit, Git

#167

Post by wrycoder »

gpspake wrote: post #108

I find people are religious about being git cli purists and only interacting with it in this black box (the terminal). On top of that a lot of people stop learning git after add commit push pull branch and merge so concepts like rebasing and cherry picking are scary. In this day and age we have state of the art GUI tools that change the game and allow git users to see and interact with the state of a git repository i…

If you want to use a private repo on GitHub with GitKraken, it will cost you $60 per year per user, minimum. Everyone wants to embrace, extend, and make a buck!

Re: Oh Shit, Git

#168

Post by nocman »

at_a_remove wrote: post #152

My first introduction to git was ... well, the professor's solution to not having a place to upload. Given that the vast majority of the students involved had done almost no programming before, it didn't go so hot. I managed. My first "production" introduction to git was really about someone polishing their resume and chanting magic words at me. Merges ... happen? Who decides whether Bob or Cindy's code is used here?…

> How is "reflog" the correct and intuitive choice for "undo"? Was there something I wasn't understanding? No, I'm just supposed to accept that.

Actually your initial intuition was correct. There are things you obviously don't understand about git. "reflog" is short for reference log. As "git help reflog" will tell you:

  Reference logs, or "reflogs", record when the tips of branches and other references were updated in the local repository.
It isn't arcane. It's perfectly logical choice for what the "git reflog" comand does, as explained in the man page: "This command manages the information recorded in the reflogs."

Now if you don't know what a reflog is, you will be confused by this. But the solution to that is for you to learn what a reflog is. And yes, in order to use git well you need to have at least a rudimentary understanding of how it works.

I know that some people do find git hard to understand. Often that is because they want it to work a different way than it does. But git is a fairly complex tool designed to solve a very complex problem. It does an outstanding job of doing what it was designed to do. However, if you are not willing to invest the time in understanding git to a minimal level (and many people aren't), you will find it to be confusing.

There is no need for "sanity" to "come to the naming of commands" for git. The commands already have sane names. But if you don't know what those names mean, it will seem to you as if they are in a foreign language. Most of the confusion people have with git is due to them having an insufficient level of knowledge of how it works. Again, if you want to use git well, you have to gain that minimal knowledge . If you are not willing to do that, then you should either become willing or choose to use some other version control program that is more to your liking.

Re: Oh Shit, Git

#169

Post by toxik »

ogogmad wrote: post #162
toxik wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the classic `rm --undo` saved me so many times. No, command-line interfaces rarely offer undo. The onus is on the user to not do irreversible things when they may need to be reversed. Git, coincidentally, does have something equivalent to undo history: the reflog.

"rm" was made in the '70s. Git was made in the '00s.

Nothing prevents rm from being made to “put in trash bin” in the year 2022. Your argument seems weak. rm removes. mv moves. If you want mv, use mv.

Re: Oh Shit, Git

#170

Post by rfiat »

tharkun__ wrote: post #83
bhrgunatha wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning the underlying model behind git is well worth the effort. For me watching Steve Smith's talk - Knowledge is Power: Getting out of Trouble by Understanding Git - was a lightbulb moment. Here's a 2019 presentation of that talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHLcZGi3yMQ

I think this is what can confuse people. We have to face the facts that not everyone will need or be able to grok all of what goes on in git and what makes the car go forward. We can all drive that car still! Take the recursive merging stuff around minute 39. Do I need to know why git's model for merging is so much better and how it works its magic? I don't think so. It's an implementation detail. Do I need to know h…

> Do I need to know how a gearbox works to drive stick shift?

No, but it helps. If I treat my car's powertrain as a black box then it won't be intuitive that:

  * I shouldn't slip the clutch to hold my car on an incline.
  * Blipping the throttle gives me smoother downshifts.
  * Double clutching lets me shift from 2nd to 1st while rolling.
  * I can use the engine to slow my descent on longer hills and avoid brake fade
  * I should park the car in gear for safety
  * etc.
Whether it's better for a given person to memorise that list of facts or to understand the concepts behind them would depend on how much they drive. As a developer I've found it helpful to gain an understanding of the tools I use daily beyond "here's the commands to copy/paste when you want to do xyz".
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