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GUM: A better CLI for Git

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Re: GUM: A better CLI for Git

#3

Post by jmccaffrey »

I'm not sure I agree that it's necessarily bad if the interface is a side-effect of the implementation. It seems very worse-is-better to me.

I feel like when the interface is a side-effect of implementation, you get a more gradual sliding scale from user to developer (like being able to experiment with web apis by curling at them).

In git's case, I appreciate that I can trawl around through my .git directory and not get lost because it pretty closely matches the interface.

Re: GUM: A better CLI for Git

#5

Post by moe »

I think "git undo" would be even nicer if it was a generic undo and simply undid the last operation (only when possible of course; unpush might be slightly problematic).

Also I'm really tired of messing with ~/.gitmodules and unwieldy *submodule-commands that demand to be executed in the project-root all the time. Why can't we simply "git add" sub-repositories, perhaps bailing with a warning by default and an extra-flag to really do it...

Re: GUM: A better CLI for Git

#6

Post by Groxx »

I quite like the idea, primarily because it would keep actions 'sounding like' what they affect. stage and unstage being the primary examples. Yeah, 'add' and 'reset' work, and fit other semantics, but when everything else refers to something you've added as something you've staged? Unnecessary cognitive friction. Add is largely useful for migrating from CVS/SVN/etc, but why not both with some porcelains?

That said, take the time and learn what git does and how it works and it makes a ton of sense. It's remarkably simple, and then the commands map directly to what you're doing to your history, which is utterly fantastic.

Re: GUM: A better CLI for Git

#7

Post by acabal »

This is such a great idea. I'm using Git for my own repositories and I find myself doing searches for things like "how to undo a stage" or "how to revert a file" so often that it almost takes as much time to use Git as it does to do my programming.

No doubt Git gods who have every nuance of the system memorized can take advantage of the flexibility of the (IMHO) complicated and obtuse CLI. But for schmucks like me who just want to get work done and not worry about it, something like this would be a godsend.

I've more than once thought about switching away from Git just because I'm scared I'll do the wrong command and mess something up--and I've been programming for 15 years.

Re: GUM: A better CLI for Git

#9

Post by DrCatbox »

Where is this GUM or better cli for git? All I see is a README file containing the same thing as the webpost. Not to be a complainer, but there may be a reason the commands are the way they are and you cant simply change them without changing the implementation, perhaps you should look at alias to solve your memory problems.
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