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A simple guide for getting started with git

rogerdudler.github.com

51–60 of 132 posts

Re: A simple guide for getting started with git

#53
post #17

Using gitx ( http://gitx.frim.nl/ ) really helped me grasp some of the concepts you talk about.

That one has been mostly abandoned by the author, for one that is regularly updated take a look at https://github.com/laullon/gitx which is a fork of the original GitX.

Re: A simple guide for getting started with git

#54
post #39

I just wrote a post about my even simpler system for using git for people who know SVN/CVS: Teach yourself git in 2 minutes http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/teach-yourself-git-in-2-minu...

Thanks! This is the best intro I've seen. Maybe now I finally have a hope of figuring out how to use the blasted thing...

Re: A simple guide for getting started with git

#55

I don't get this. Sure, the tutorial looks very pretty, but it does not explain any concepts. "Create a new repository." What is a repository? What do I do with it? The HEAD is a tree "which points to the last commit you've made". Huh? A tree can point? The one in my garden can't. Also, what's a commit? I thought "commit" was a verb, not a noun. And so on. It's nice that people want to make something as complex as gi…

Indeed. I've been using source control of various flavors for 15 years now, and that "Trees" section is completely unparseable by me. Why are there 3 of them? Why do I care that there are 3 of them? What do I use them for? If I don't use them all directly, why are we talking about them?

Further, why are we talking in terms of the actual command-line commands? Surely a version control system as popular as this has tools at least as good as TortoiseSVN so that I don't have to actually type commands into a command prompt like some bearded guy from the '70s. I'd much prefer you tell me the name of the popular Windows/Mac client and walk me through the workflow I'll actually use on a day-to-day basis.

Re: A simple guide for getting started with git

#56

What's the point of including instructions for downloading git for MacOSX, when it's already installed in the system by default?

I don't think Git ships with OS X, does it? I think it's bundled with XCode but not with the base OS. http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/18470/why-is-git-no...

Quite possibly; all of the Macs I have on hand already have Xcode installed so I can't check. But I don't think that's a big issue; if you're developing software you're almost certainly going to want to install Xcode and all the accompanying dev tools anyway.

Re: A simple guide for getting started with git

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always happy about better wording. Any ideas?

I think the problem is that the guide doesn't explain the vocabulary it uses at all. There are programmers (and definitely non-programmers) who might not have heard the word "tree" used to describe a directory filled with files and other directories. It's immediately clear once it's explained, and the guide even has little drawings that look like a directory tree, but for people new to version control and people who…

I found it pretty helpful with the use of the word "tree" (got it from http://progit.org/). But I definitely need to add some kind of glossary to the page.

Re: A simple guide for getting started with git

#58
post #33

The idea is nice, but the implementation is crap. I don't use git but I'd like to. I guess I'm the target market in a sense. The key to simplifying a tutorial is removal of jargon. Just tell it like it is. FYI: This is the line at which I closed the tab: "checkout a repository" - wtf. I don't know what a repository is and now I'm checking it out? is checkout a typo? maybe it should be check-out? either way, I have no…

Really? You don't know what a repository is? Or are you just being hypothetically ignorant?

I believe that somebody googling git usage is going to be a little bit conversant in the topic of version control.

Re: A simple guide for getting started with git

#59

I don't get this. Sure, the tutorial looks very pretty, but it does not explain any concepts. "Create a new repository." What is a repository? What do I do with it? The HEAD is a tree "which points to the last commit you've made". Huh? A tree can point? The one in my garden can't. Also, what's a commit? I thought "commit" was a verb, not a noun. And so on. It's nice that people want to make something as complex as gi…

I agree with you in general, but I feel like you take a wrong perspective of it. The author takes a top-down approach to teaching, which basically means that he thought about this tutorial from his perspective, someone that was already intimately familiar with the details. This, as you pointed out, is wrong. If this is a tutorial for beginners, you need to have some explanation of what "checking-out" means, what "tre…

Coming from my perspective (I'm familiar with the concepts of version control, and and a good enough high level understanding of it, but I don't know how to use git and it's commands), I found this very useful and informative. I suppose you could break down knowledge of git into 2 types, WHAT it does, and HOW to use it. I think this tutorial fails at the first part (or doesn't care about it) but is tremendously useful for the second part. It's just a good starting point for someone like me, who knows what it is, but doesn't know how to use it yet.

Re: A simple guide for getting started with git

#60

I don't get this. Sure, the tutorial looks very pretty, but it does not explain any concepts. "Create a new repository." What is a repository? What do I do with it? The HEAD is a tree "which points to the last commit you've made". Huh? A tree can point? The one in my garden can't. Also, what's a commit? I thought "commit" was a verb, not a noun. And so on. It's nice that people want to make something as complex as gi…

Indeed. I've been using source control of various flavors for 15 years now, and that "Trees" section is completely unparseable by me. Why are there 3 of them? Why do I care that there are 3 of them? What do I use them for? If I don't use them all directly, why are we talking about them? Further, why are we talking in terms of the actual command-line commands? Surely a version control system as popular as this has too…

> I don't have to actually type commands into a command prompt like some bearded guy from the '70s

Really? I mean, really?

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