From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "J. Bruce Fields" Subject: Re: how to display file history? Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 13:55:49 -0400 Message-ID: <20060515175549.GD15165@fieldses.org> References: <7v64k7wzzf.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Linus Torvalds , Junio C Hamano , "Brown, Len" , git@vger.kernel.org X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Mon May 15 19:56:23 2006 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git@gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1FfhIX-0002gS-Jh for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Mon, 15 May 2006 19:56:01 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S965007AbWEORz7 (ORCPT ); Mon, 15 May 2006 13:55:59 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S965012AbWEORz7 (ORCPT ); Mon, 15 May 2006 13:55:59 -0400 Received: from mail.fieldses.org ([66.93.2.214]:58077 "EHLO pickle.fieldses.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S965007AbWEORz6 (ORCPT ); Mon, 15 May 2006 13:55:58 -0400 Received: from bfields by pickle.fieldses.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FfhIM-0006qp-1A; Mon, 15 May 2006 13:55:50 -0400 To: "Eric W. Biederman" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.11+cvs20060403 Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: On Mon, May 15, 2006 at 10:29:20AM -0600, Eric W. Biederman wrote: > Sure. If it gets included in a tutorial is great, but existing > users aren't likely to read through a tutorial if they think they > know what is going on. > > Having it documented in the man pages (i.e. the reference > documentation) which is where people look to check up on the fine > points of a command is more likely to matter. Looks like the current git-log man page refers you to the git-rev-list page for that, and the use of path names is documented there. I think that's a pretty reasonable approach for reference documentation, which should be concise. Duplicating the git-rev-list documentation (even some of it) to every man page to which it's relevant would add a lot of text. The current git-log man page is misleading, though--it suggests that git-log accepts (and git-rev-list documents) only options, which might discourage a reader from tracking down information about non-option arguments. I also agree about the tutorial--the "Keeping track of history" section would be a good place to introduce this and git-grep with some fun examples. It's on my todo list, but may take a while, so maybe someone else can beat me to it.... --b.