Re: If you would write git from scratch now, what would you change?

["Carlos Rica" <jasampler@gmail.com>]

On Nov 26, 2007 7:36 AM, Adam Roben <aroben@apple.com> wrote:
> Junio C Hamano wrote:
> > Steven Walter <stevenrwalter@gmail.com> writes:
> > Let's clear the confusion.  Although it is not bad like the above
> > "random 5 different operations", checkout does serve 2 quite different
> > purposes:
> >
> >  (1) checkout a revision.
> >  (2) checkout selected paths out of a commit (or the index).
> >
>
> Given the above, I'd argue that it serves 3 purposes:
>
>    (1) check out a revision
>    (2) check out selected paths out of a commit (or the index)
>    (3) start working on a new branch
>
> It's true that (1) and (3) are very closely related, but I think in the
> minds of many git users (particularly new ones) they are distinct.

I think this is mostly due to the idea of a branch as a separated box
(like a directory) instead of a line of development like the notion which
comes from thinking in a branch as the place where HEAD is pointing to.

Personally, it is always difficult for me to understand git as a whole,
because I'm not sure what is the common use case for each command in
the most-usual-way-of-doing-the-things when using git, despite of having
long and complete documentation for each individual command. The question
is if we can give the power of git to their users in the same way they think,
or how git could be able to teach their users to think in the way it works.

An idea would be to study (and document) the most successful
use cases that git supports and check if it is already providing
unique and/or clear commands for them.

--Carlos