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Git tips and tricks

blog.gitbutler.com

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Re: Git tips and tricks

#21

Post by goku12 »

iraqmtpizza wrote: post #17
goku12 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A part of Git's complexity is due to the fact that it was originally meant to be just the plumbing. It was expected that more user-friendly porcelain would be written on top of the git data model. Perhaps that is still the best bet at having a simple and consistent UI. Jujutsu and Got (game of trees) are possible examples.

>originally meant to just the plumbing this describes all of unix. as soon as scripts were allowed to use commands, those commands could never be changed. lest we have a nerd riot on our hands

Creating an alternative UI is rather uncontroversial. The plumbing doesn't need replacement. Jujutsu for example, seems to be popular.

Re: Git tips and tricks

#22

Post by schacon »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #18
schacon wrote: post #2

Heya, author here. I have to admit that I learned a lot of these things fairly recently. The large repository stuff has been added into core piece by piece by Microsoft and GitHub over the last few years, it's hard to actually find one place that describes everything they've done. Hope it's helpful. I've also had some fun conversations with the Mercurial guys about this. They've recently started writing some Hg inter…

Thank you for your writing on Git over the years, particularly Pro Git, which is helpful.

Thank you for reading. :)

Re: Git tips and tricks

#23

Post by oasisaimlessly »

dayjaby wrote: post #15
goku12 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A part of Git's complexity is due to the fact that it was originally meant to be just the plumbing. It was expected that more user-friendly porcelain would be written on top of the git data model. Perhaps that is still the best bet at having a simple and consistent UI. Jujutsu and Got (game of trees) are possible examples.

That's a bold statement. Any proof or article where Linus states that?

Well, the existence of and story behind cogito [1] should be decent proof.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito_(software)

Re: Git tips and tricks

#24

Post by schacon »

schacon wrote: post #19
goku12 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean the plumbing part, I recalled it from memory. I don't have anything from Linus to back this up. But have a look at this from the Pro-Git book [1]: > But because Git was initially a toolkit for a version control system rather than a full user-friendly VCS, it has a number of subcommands that do low-level work and were designed to be chained together UNIX-style or called from scripts. Note that its author (…

Boy, I can't find this either (but also, the kernel mailing list is _really_ difficult to search). I really remember Linus saying something like "it's not a real SCM, but maybe someone could build one on top of it someday" or something like that, but I cannot figure out how to find that. You _can_ see, though, that in his first README, he refers to what he's building as not a "real SCM": https://github.com/git/git/co…

So, I found the git-pasky project in the _very_ early days (like a couple days after Linus's first git commits) and iirc, it was an attempt to build an SCM-like thing over the plumbing that Linus was working on:

https://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=111315057710062&w=2

Re: Git tips and tricks

#25

Post by goku12 »

schacon wrote: post #19
goku12 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean the plumbing part, I recalled it from memory. I don't have anything from Linus to back this up. But have a look at this from the Pro-Git book [1]: > But because Git was initially a toolkit for a version control system rather than a full user-friendly VCS, it has a number of subcommands that do low-level work and were designed to be chained together UNIX-style or called from scripts. Note that its author (…

Boy, I can't find this either (but also, the kernel mailing list is _really_ difficult to search). I really remember Linus saying something like "it's not a real SCM, but maybe someone could build one on top of it someday" or something like that, but I cannot figure out how to find that. You _can_ see, though, that in his first README, he refers to what he's building as not a "real SCM": https://github.com/git/git/co…

Here is what I found based on your lead ("real SCM", from 17 Apr 2005):

> That was really what I always personally saw "git" as, just the plumbing beneath the surface. For example, something like arch, which is based on "patches and tar-balls" (I think darcs is similar in that respect), could use git as a _hell_ of a better "history of tar-balls".

[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/git/Pine.LNX.4.58.0504170916080.7211...

Re: Git tips and tricks

#26

Post by emmelaich »

patatino wrote: post #3

I do not want to learn git tricks. I just wanna use it as simple as possible. Just let me push my code and be done with git and keep on working. Kudos to all who love git, for me, it's just a tool I have to use.

There is detail inherent in the problem and some not. I tend to think we underestimate the inherent problems.

So I'm happy for the 'complexity' of git.

Re: Git tips and tricks

#27

Post by diarrhea »

schacon wrote: post #2

Heya, author here. I have to admit that I learned a lot of these things fairly recently. The large repository stuff has been added into core piece by piece by Microsoft and GitHub over the last few years, it's hard to actually find one place that describes everything they've done. Hope it's helpful. I've also had some fun conversations with the Mercurial guys about this. They've recently started writing some Hg inter…

I remember watching your FOSDEM talk on YouTube, where you asked whether people have rerere turned on _and_ know what it is, in one question. I have it on, but only the faintest of clues what it is! Just git things, I suppose.

https://youtu.be/aolI_Rz0ZqY?t=910

Re: Git tips and tricks

#28

Post by koonsolo »

patatino wrote: post #3

I do not want to learn git tricks. I just wanna use it as simple as possible. Just let me push my code and be done with git and keep on working. Kudos to all who love git, for me, it's just a tool I have to use.

My feeling is that the git interface is a leaky abstraction. I also don't want to learn git tricks, but unfortunately I learned more about it than I wanted to.

Re: Git tips and tricks

#29

Post by bluetomcat »

goku12 wrote: post #9
patatino wrote: post #3

I do not want to learn git tricks. I just wanna use it as simple as possible. Just let me push my code and be done with git and keep on working. Kudos to all who love git, for me, it's just a tool I have to use.

A part of Git's complexity is due to the fact that it was originally meant to be just the plumbing. It was expected that more user-friendly porcelain would be written on top of the git data model. Perhaps that is still the best bet at having a simple and consistent UI. Jujutsu and Got (game of trees) are possible examples.

It's a collection of hacky tools for manipulating a DAG of objects, identified by a SHA-1 hash. If you look at it this way, you wouldn't expect any consistency in the CLI interface.

Re: Git tips and tricks

#30

Post by iraqmtpizza »

goku12 wrote: post #21
iraqmtpizza wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>originally meant to just the plumbing this describes all of unix. as soon as scripts were allowed to use commands, those commands could never be changed. lest we have a nerd riot on our hands

Creating an alternative UI is rather uncontroversial. The plumbing doesn't need replacement. Jujutsu for example, seems to be popular.

Ha, replacement? You can't even get them to fix bugs. If you fix a bug in a unix command you'll break every script in existence and bring the world down. It's idiotic.

The user's a file! The internet's a file! Keyboard is a file! What are checkboxes? This is a volunteer project! You can't expect us to include UI in the OS! We'll just bikeshed forever so sorry, write your own, lol.

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