Re: [PATCH] user-manual: set user.name and user.email with repo-config

[Matthias Lederhofer <matled@gmx.net>]

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> I dunno. I really think that editing the config file is actually simpler.
> 
> The "git repo-config" thing is really usefull from scripting, and for 
> general automation, but maybe it's just me - I find human-readable ASCII 
> files that you can put comments in etc just *nice*.
> 
> I think the whole notion that you have to use a tool to edit 
> configurations is asinine. It's good to have a tool for automation, but 
> it's bad if that's the only way to interact with the system.
> 
> The first time I had to use AIX, and realized that they do everything with 
> some crazy system management tool, and that you can't do anything by 
> editing files in /etc, I realized that IBM was totally incompetent when it 
> came to UNIX.
> 
> I mean, do people _really_ think that it's easier to do black magic 
> scripts like
> 
> 	git repo-config --global user.name "Your Name Comes Here"
> 
> (which not only looks scary, but means that the user will never learn 
> about the git config file at all), or just somebody saying:
> 
> 	"Fill your .git/config file with
> 
> 		[user]
> 			name = Your Name Here
> 			email = your@email.example
> 
> 	 and be happy"
> 
> I'm just saying that the second example seems to not only be more 
> human-friendly, it actually teaches people something that "git 
> repo-config" never did. 
> 
> Maybe most users will just do what they are told without thinking about 
> it, but then some users will look at that and say "Ahh, there's a 
> .git/config file, I wonder what else I could do there.."

Good point, otoh the git-repo-config manual page is actually the one
documenting .git/config :).  Therefore I think the manual should
mention git-repo-config(1) for information on .git/config with the
first use of the config file (actually the second because the first is
in part 1 which is only a list of commands).

Later in the manual git-repo-config is used to read (-l) and edit the
config file, perhaps there should be a short sentence that there is no
difference to editing .git/config directly.

---
user-manual: mention git-repo-config(1) with .git/config

---
 Documentation/user-manual.txt |    3 ++-
 1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/user-manual.txt b/Documentation/user-manual.txt
index 87c605f..509a867 100644
--- a/Documentation/user-manual.txt
+++ b/Documentation/user-manual.txt
@@ -603,7 +603,8 @@ $ cat .git/config
 
 This is what causes git to track the remote's branches; you may
 modify or delete these configuration options by editing .git/config
-with a text editor.
+with a text editor.  See gitlink:git-repo-config[1] for more
+information on .git/config.
 
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