Re: Command-line interface thoughts

[Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 10 Jul 2011, Michael Nahas wrote:
> Jakub Narebski wrote:

> > 'git diff' / 'git diff --cached' / 'git diff HEAD' is about use cases
> > (or "user stories").  'git diff NEXT WTREE' / 'git diff HEAD NEXT' /
> > / 'git diff HEAD WTREE' are about mechanism.
> 
> Would you say that the UNIX commands "find", "grep", and "xargs" are
> about use cases?  I rarely use them by themselves.  They clearly
> manipulate concepts: files and lines.  So, it's easy for me to think
> what this does:
> 
> find . | grep "\.h" | xargs grep MyClass | grep public

You do know that this is way suboptimal, even if you don't have 'ack'
installed, and don't use "git grep --no-index"?

> 
> I'm trying to find concepts the concepts that git manipulates and I
> think NEXT and WTREE are part of those concepts.
> 
> It is my opinion that if we focus on concepts, we'll be able to create
> general commands and that the user will be able to combine the
> commands in new and interesting ways, like I combined the UNIX
> commands above.
> 
> I believe in "common" use cases.  The common case should be fast.  I
> have always recommended still allowing "git diff" by itself.
> 
> 
> BUT if we focus only on use cases, we'll create tools that are
> specific to ONE thing and are NOT general.  They will be harder for
> users to conceptualize and harder to combine in new and interesting
> ways.

But if it is the angle you want to play, then don't advertise it as
a feature meant for _new users_!  But if you go that route (e.g. as a way
to compare BASE with THEIRS, for whatever reason), then you probably
would need to invent some notation that is obvious that these are not
refs, like HEAD, ORIG_HEAD, MERGE_HEAD and FETCH_HEAD are.  Something
that is easy to remember, won't go in the way of either git or shell;
see e.g.

  http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/175262/focus=175407

in "[RFC/PATCH] git put: an alternative to add/reset/checkout" thread.

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland