Gitless: experimental version control system
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Gitless: experimental version control system
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Re: Gitless: experimental version control system
#2As a novice git user, I can't really tell how Gitless is really different from Git in daily use cases. Any explanations?
Re: Gitless: experimental version control system
#3I like the idea of an easier to use Git but I'd wish for a clearer side-by-side explanation how Gitless is supposed to be simpler than Git (for instance, the CoffeeScript website shows clearly how it compares to JavaScript: http://coffeescript.org/)
Re: Gitless: experimental version control system
#4So... if I'm reading this right, this is basically Git without the staging area/index? (Or, alternatively, Git where tracked files are always in the staging area?)
Re: Gitless: experimental version control system
#5I think the problem lies with the expectation that people will just pick up how to use git and how it works.
Wouldn't it be better to provide small classes to people where understanding can be gained, rather than abstract how to use Git with a different client?
Re: Gitless: experimental version control system
#6In my experience, if you are to learn Git properly, you need to start off with a GUI.
Some of the concepts behind DVCS, such as the DAG, merging, resolving conflicts, even the staging area, are much easier to understand when you can actually visualise them. I've found that people who try to jump in at the deep end with the command line sometimes don't understand Git as well as they think they do.
These days I tend to use the command line a lot more, and I would strongly recommend people to do so once they've mastered the core concepts, but I still like to have a GUI to hand so I can see at a glance where things are at with my branches, staging area, etc.
Re: Gitless: experimental version control system
#7Git is pretty atrocious, so I like the idea here, but I'm not sure it goes far enough. My main complaints about git are probably
having to commit changes manually (I haven't had to do this in Dropbox)
terrible history and branch navigation (chrome does a better job and that's not even like an important feature of a browser)
confusing command structure and options
history rewriting and the resulting issues
no merge tool (I feel like kaleidoscope is the minimum here)
submodules
Gitless seems to address #3 there but not the others. Actually making a tool that improves git to where it could be would probably be a huge undertaking, and most people do alright with git so maybe it's not worth it. Or maybe there's some graphical git client like tower that fixes all this stuff.
Re: Gitless: experimental version control system
#8Git is pretty atrocious, so I like the idea here, but I'm not sure it goes far enough. My main complaints about git are probably having to commit changes manually (I haven't had to do this in Dropbox) terrible history and branch navigation (chrome does a better job and that's not even like an important feature of a browser) confusing command structure and options history rewriting and the resulting issues no merge to…
I wonder if there are any benchmarks or case-studies on very large git repos? Ideally you'd want to track (commit) every change to files and allow the user to place tags at certain places in the graph (similar to how commits are currently used) to represent aggregated logical changes.
It would also be nice to have a visualization of the graph that could easily be 'seeked' through like a video.
Putting this on top of the existing git CLI code might not be feasible though.
Re: Gitless: experimental version control system
#9In my experience, if you are to learn Git properly, you need to start off with a GUI. Some of the concepts behind DVCS, such as the DAG, merging, resolving conflicts, even the staging area, are much easier to understand when you can actually visualise them. I've found that people who try to jump in at the deep end with the command line sometimes don't understand Git as well as they think they do. These days I tend to…
Whenever I've tried GUI Git tools I've always found them confusing than the command line Git
In trying to be simple they often left me feeling powerless
Re: Gitless: experimental version control system
#10A lot of people want to use powerful tools but want it through an iPad-ish interface. If I'm using a space-rocket to get to the moon, I'm certainly going to learn how this shit is working and not fooling myself that if I just know what the buttons should do,I understand the system.
GIT is marvelous if you understand the data-structures, people are too fixated on the commands and think everyone one of them is like magic, but all those commands just function on a handful of data structures. (though some of the commands are not always intuitively named)
Recommended reading: http://ftp.newartisans.com/pub/git.from.bottom.up.pdf