Git User's Survey 2007 summary - git homepage improvements

Git User's Survey 2007 summary - git homepage improvements

[Jakub Narebski]

50. What could be improved on the GIT homepage?

  TO DO
  171 / 683 non-empty responses

--
Note from the homepage, http://git.or.cz/

This website itself is tracked in Git as well - you can browse its
development history or even clone it from
http://repo.or.cz/r/git-homepage.git. The site is covered by GPLv2 and
maintained by Petr Baudis who always takes patches eagerly. ;-)
--

List of answers, without count, divided into broad categories.
Some answers were hard to classify into one section, so please read
carefully.

Generic
 * Keep it always up-to-date!
 * Catch up with the latest version in kernel.org/.../RPMS. ;-)
   1.5.3.2 is out.
 * Publicity. Until the survey I didn't know it had all that!
   There is a homepage?
 * More active movement between IRC/list and FAQs
 * Less Linux programmer focused.
 * Maybe provide translation
   Translations to other languages for better adaption elsewhere.
   i18n.
 * A dedicated domain name, easy to remember and find.
   Nicer URL? (git.org?)
 * Change the site name to have 'git' in it! Like 'TheGitSite.com'
   rather than git.qk.wkx.or (ir is git.or.cz) or whatever.
 * It could use a better url than 'git.or.cz'; the URL looks like a
   mirror and I'm not sure I'm on the official home page.
 * Git could use a real logo.

Code and design
 * Could be more sexy.
 * Graphical design.
 * Give it some nice & fresh design.
 * Make it more attractive.
 * Color scheme (?)
 * Better design and appreciation for aesthetics. For the typical
   'programmer' whose position is 'who cares what it looks like' they
   won't care. For the managers and other folks that need to be
   convinced it will look more polished and professional. Appearances
   matter.
 * Move the details on fetching the development code to the 'getting
   git' page.
 * More prominent links to documentation on how to get started with
   GIT.
 * More bling :-) but I'm not really sure about that.
   Non-technical users get scared away anyway.
 * Smarten it up with some colour and graphics.
 * Maybe get a graphics monkey and make it less dull but otherwise the
   content is OK.
 * Make it prettier. Sounds silly but it counts. Bazaar's main feature
   is a pretty website ;).
 * The layout. It's ok for me but it looks like a minor hobby
   project's page
 * Make it easier to find information.
   Reorganization to find the most important information easily.
 * The page has too much info and is hard to navigate.
   Look at http://www.mozilla.com/ for contrast.
 * Better layout. It seems busy and hard to find things. Simplify.
   Better layout to make things easier to find.
 * Move the documentation up to the top.
   It's what people want to access the most!
 * Perhaps divide it again into separate pages if it grows
 * The layout and the organization of the sections. It's pretty hard
   to know why should I use git just looking at the webpage.
 * A proper side bar for things that are currently in boxes.
 * Hide the rarer commands and special tricks deeper and emphasize the
   best usage practices.
 * Less text on the front page, less text per page
 * Web 2.0 type interface as Ruby and Ubuntu have.
 * Pictures. Fancy layout.
   Less clutter.
   I find it somewhat unstructured.
 * Modern styles look and feel.
 * Download link needs to stand out more. The homepage appears rather
   'flat' that is nothing stands out as more important than the rest.
   In order of importance, I think there should be:
     1. Download
     2. Git Quickstart Guide
     3. Documentation
 * The lines are too long. Try to find a better proportion.
 * It doesn't look like a project home page.
   Mercurial does a better job with the look of their page IMHO.
 * Make it less monolithic. Stick documentation on its own page,
   methods of acquiring GIT on its own page and so forth. That allows
   more room for each without making one huge homepage.
 * Divide content up into sets of info related to tasks a person would
   be interested in
     - getting a first setup
     - maintaining/updates
     - introductory documentation
     - reference/refresh-memory info
     - project/git-developer info
 * Make it look more modern but don't use too many web features
   (i.e. make sure it works on elinks).

Documentation
 * Link to Git User's Manual and not only to crash course/tutorial
   Feature the User Manual more prominently
 * More documentation.
   More tutorials and examples.
   More workflow examples, more crash courses.
 * More links to documentation/tutorials/howto
 * Recipes for how to do things with git.
   Examples and workflows.
   Common pitfalls.
 * More visible link to the tutorial.
 * Old documentation removed / updated (index, staging, cache).
   Less emphasis on cogito / Remove Cogito references.
 * Remove more aggressively outdated documentation for historic tools
   (like cogito).
 * Fluxograms describing some use cases.
   Perhaps some diagrams.
 * More comprehensive tutorial with optional boxouts.
 * Up to date information about best practises and recommended tools.
 * Add a new users section with some walkthroughs that show how to use
   git practically on a real repository. Maybe add comparable commands
   from other SCMs. (git clone -> cvs checkout)
 * 'git for svn/cvs people' could use an overhaul
   (at least they did a few months ago)
   The Git for SVN users tutorial is incomplete and does not explain
   for example how the index works and why it's there. Thus people end
   up thinking that 'svn add' is like 'git add' whereas it's not.
 * A 'git features tour' showing the great features git has.
 * Add some material for presenting git to others (slides)
 * Add a tutorial helping deal with a conflict merge.
 * Feature-driven help: a list of features with short tutorial on how
   to use each one.
 * Example of interacting with CVS repository
   (import, export, cvsserver)
 * Highlight those pieces of documentation that aren't easily
   available through --help and man 'git-something'.
 * Getting started for new users.
 * Simple online demo and beginner Tutorial on one page.
   The demo could be an applet giving access to a terminal of a
   running virtual machine with git and some demo repositories.
   The virtual machine is reset every full hour.
 * Some way to indicate which version of Git a specific piece of
   documentation refers to.
 * Missing information: examples of ways diffent (real) projects use
   Git.
 * More details on how to make a centralized workflow work
 * A prominent 'Why git?' or 'Why distributed?' section might be good.
 * Better SVN -> Git

Downloads
 * It could be more up-to-date about new git versions (sometimes it
   lags behind a bit).
 * Catch up with the latest version in kernel.org/.../RPMS. ;-)
   1.5.3.2 is out.
 * Current official version should include the one on master.
   Snapshots. Results of nightly builds and tests.
   There should be links to download pu/next/master/maint branches
   tar.gz trees (snapshots) from gitweb.
 * Information about Windows version(s).
   Easier for windows users to find msysgit (maybe with a development
   warning) under 'Getting git'.
   Links to windows ports: http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/
   and a plea for help.
 * Download link needs to stand out more.
 * Download repository for the most common distros (Ubuntu, RedHat /
   Fedora Core, SuSE).
 * Provide processed man pages to install
   Provide PDF documentation

Information, new links, new features
 * What's New section
 * News and info about where things are going (roadmap).
 * Link to the latest release announcement. Now you can only find a
   link to the tarball but most of the time I only want to take a
   quick look at the announcement (RelNotes).
 * Add a news section and maybe some pointers to interesting
   user-contributed HOWTOs or something.
 * Add more external porcelains like Guilt to the frontpage.
 * Recommended 'out-of-the-box' package of GUI or CLI interface.
 * Cogito state should be better clarified.
 * Bring the porcelains list up-to-date -- in particular mark
   Cogito (cg) as outright deprecated.
 * More information on project around GIT (like GUIs etc).
 * Perhaps making some pages like FAQ or Tips and Tricks, or
   discussion about nature of branches in git taken from GitWiki when
   they are mature enough
 * I wish for Git Traffic: digest of git mailing list discussions
   (there was one at http://kerneltraffic.org/git/index.html but it
   stopped after one issue; KernelTraffic is also no longer updated)
   Some type of recent news collected from the mailing list 'what's
   new in the latest release' or coming-soon previews would be nice.
 * The layout and the organization of the sections. It's pretty hard
   to know why should I use git just looking at the webpage.
 * More marketing on what projects use git and perhaps more blurb on
   why git is better than other SCMs.
 * Easier access to release notes and changleogs (i.e. the history)
   without having to browse the git repo or read separate pages from
   the documentation.
 * A blog or news page (not everyone enjoys mailing lists),
   perhaps link to mailing list archive
 * Provide 'A note from the maintainer' as a prominent link probably
   named as 'How the git project is managed and how to participate'
 * Place links to direct git's plugins core and tools source tree.
 * Link to some good GUIs. Giggle is a good GUI that serves my needs.

One person seems to mistake git documentation page ("reprint of the
man pages") at http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/
for the homepage, another mistook (kernel.org?) gitweb for it.


Here is short summary of most common answers, with a short comment if
appropriate:

Generic:
 # Dedicated domain name / site name, e.g. git.org or git.com
   to have it look less like mirror or unofficial page

   (git.or.cz still comes first when searching Google for "git";
   current domain name was available to homepage admin - historical
   reason)

 # Better design: make it prettier, easier to find information,
   move more important things first, use sidebar instead of boxes,
   perhaps divide it into separate pages (again). But make sure it
   works on Elinks for example.

   (IIRC pasky is not web designer, so help is appreciated)

Documentation
 # More documentation: tutorials, workflow examples, walkthroughs,
   SCM commands comparison, interacting with other SCMs, HOWTOs, best
   practices, recommended tools, fluxograms describing use cases
   (graphics).  Make link to Git User's Manual stand out better.

 # Less emphasizis on Cogito, mark it more explicitely as deprecated
   and slowly try to get rid of Cogito references in documentation
   (e.g. crash courses).

   (Cogito is officially deprecated from not a long time; the process
   of removing references to cg in crash courses is AFAIK ongoing)

 # More emphasizis on "Why git?" and "Why distributed SCM?".
   A 'git features tour' showing the great features git has.
   In short: why and when to choose git.

   (Someone would have to write it)

 # Simple online demo. The demo could be an applet giving access to a
   terminal of a running virtual machine with git and some demo
   repositories.  The virtual machine is reset every full hour.

   (This might be a good idea, but I think it is a bit hard to do from
   technical point of view; at least securely, securing against
   intrusion and, perhaps accidental, denial of service)

Downloads:
 # More up-to-date about new git versions.

   (With one person updating homepage, who is not git maintainer...)

 # There should be links to download pu/next/master/maint branches
   tar.gz trees (snapshots) from gitweb.

   (The source snapshot part is quite easy to do, but it might
   increase load on kernel.org / repo.or.cz, unless snapshots are
   somehow cached)

 # Results of nightly builds and tests.
   Static binaries for other OS (FreeBSD, MacOS X).

   (There is a matter of machine park. Somewhere those nightly builds,
   perhaps together with nightly running of test suite, have to run.)

 # Information about MS Windows version(s). Link to MSys Git, marking
   it as under development; perhaps plea for help?

 # Provide processed man pages to install. Provide PDF documentation,
   at least PDF version of Git User's Manual.

   (Having PDF version is quite new; there is no manual.pdf target in
   official Makefile.)

Information, new links, new features
 # Link to the latest release announcement (RelNotes) on download page.

   (Links to relnotes are in HTML version of git(7) manpage, but I
   think it is not enough. Happily we _have_ release announcements)

 # News section, info about where things are goung (roadmap)

   (Junio has a hard time maintaining TODO, and git doesn't have
   roadmap AFAICT)

 # Provide 'A note from the maintainer' as a prominent link probably
   named as 'How the git project is managed and how to participate'

   (That is a good idea I think, better than having it on GitWiki.
   We can put direct link to SubmittingPatches nearby.)

 # I wish for Git Traffic: digest of git mailing list discussions
   Some type of recent news collected from the mailing list 'what's
   new in the latest release' or coming-soon previews would be nice.

   (There was one at http://kerneltraffic.org/git/index.html but it
   stopped after one issue; KernelTraffic is also no longer updated.
   Do you volunteer?)

 # Links to more tools, GUIs, version control interface layers.
   A somewhat related request: copy pages like FAQ or Tips and Tricks,
   or discussion about branches from GitWiki when they are mature
   enough.

   (For example there was requests to put links to / info about Guilt
   and Giggle on git homepage. Giggle has quite a bit of users among
   GUIs).


-- 
Jakub Narebski

Re: Git User's Survey 2007 summary - git homepage improvements

[Frank Lichtenheld]

On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 12:05:22AM +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:
> Generic:
>  # Dedicated domain name / site name, e.g. git.org or git.com
>    to have it look less like mirror or unofficial page
> 
>    (git.or.cz still comes first when searching Google for "git";
>    current domain name was available to homepage admin - historical
>    reason)

Hmm, I guess most names that would qualify are already taken
(most of them by squatters, though). So someone
would have to pay money for this...
(And I guess something like git-scm.org wouldn't qualify as more
"official", would it?)

However, I have to admit I had quite some problems remembering the
domain name myself in the beginning...

> Downloads:
>  # More up-to-date about new git versions.
> 
>    (With one person updating homepage, who is not git maintainer...)

There are use-cases for shared repositories. Maybe this is one of them?

Gruesse,
-- 
Frank Lichtenheld <frank@lichtenheld.de>
www: http://www.djpig.de/

Re: Git User's Survey 2007 summary - git homepage improvements

[Jan Hudec]

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On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 00:56:18 +0200, Frank Lichtenheld wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 12:05:22AM +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:
> > Generic:
> >  # Dedicated domain name / site name, e.g. git.org or git.com
> >    to have it look less like mirror or unofficial page
> > 
> >    (git.or.cz still comes first when searching Google for "git";
> >    current domain name was available to homepage admin - historical
> >    reason)
> 
> Hmm, I guess most names that would qualify are already taken
> (most of them by squatters, though). So someone
> would have to pay money for this...
> (And I guess something like git-scm.org wouldn't qualify as more
> "official", would it?)

It certainly would. It would be 2nd level domain, not a 3rd level one.

Note, that none of the other vcs' have a homepage at theirname.org --
subversion is svn.tigris.org, bazaar is bazaaz-vcs.org, mercurial is
www.selenic.com/mercurial, svk is svk.bestpractical.com, monotone is
monotone.ca. So git-vcs.org would be quite good.

-- 
						 Jan 'Bulb' Hudec <bulb@ucw.cz>

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Re: Git User's Survey 2007 summary - git homepage improvements

[Petr Baudis]

On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 10:12:47PM +0200, Jan Hudec wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 00:56:18 +0200, Frank Lichtenheld wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 12:05:22AM +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:
> > > Generic:
> > >  # Dedicated domain name / site name, e.g. git.org or git.com
> > >    to have it look less like mirror or unofficial page
> > > 
> > >    (git.or.cz still comes first when searching Google for "git";
> > >    current domain name was available to homepage admin - historical
> > >    reason)
> > 
> > Hmm, I guess most names that would qualify are already taken
> > (most of them by squatters, though). So someone
> > would have to pay money for this...
> > (And I guess something like git-scm.org wouldn't qualify as more
> > "official", would it?)
> 
> It certainly would. It would be 2nd level domain, not a 3rd level one.
> 
> Note, that none of the other vcs' have a homepage at theirname.org --
> subversion is svn.tigris.org, bazaar is bazaaz-vcs.org, mercurial is
> www.selenic.com/mercurial, svk is svk.bestpractical.com, monotone is
> monotone.ca. So git-vcs.org would be quite good.

If someone trustworthy in the community has the resources to sponsor the
domain, I will only be happy and gladly set it up on my side (I can run
the nameservers myself too, if required).  But I don't have the
resources for registering the domain myself, unfortunately.

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
                -- James Thurber

Re: Git User's Survey 2007 summary - git homepage improvements

[Shawn O. Pearce]

Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 10:12:47PM +0200, Jan Hudec wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 00:56:18 +0200, Frank Lichtenheld wrote:
> > > On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 12:05:22AM +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:
> > > > Generic:
> > > >  # Dedicated domain name / site name, e.g. git.org or git.com
...
> > > (And I guess something like git-scm.org wouldn't qualify as more
> > > "official", would it?)
> > 
...
> If someone trustworthy in the community has the resources to sponsor the
> domain, I will only be happy and gladly set it up on my side (I can run
> the nameservers myself too, if required).  But I don't have the
> resources for registering the domain myself, unfortunately.

"git" is a three letter word.  I don't think there have been *any*
three letter .com/.org/.net domains available for years.

I see that Jonas Fonseca registered git-scm.org today...  I wonder
what his plans are for that domain...

-- 
Shawn.

Re: Git User's Survey 2007 summary - git homepage improvements

[david]

On Tue, 16 Oct 2007, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:

> Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz> wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 10:12:47PM +0200, Jan Hudec wrote:
>>> On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 00:56:18 +0200, Frank Lichtenheld wrote:
>>>> On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 12:05:22AM +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:
>>>>> Generic:
>>>>>  # Dedicated domain name / site name, e.g. git.org or git.com
> ...
>>>> (And I guess something like git-scm.org wouldn't qualify as more
>>>> "official", would it?)
>>>
> ...
>> If someone trustworthy in the community has the resources to sponsor the
>> domain, I will only be happy and gladly set it up on my side (I can run
>> the nameservers myself too, if required).  But I don't have the
>> resources for registering the domain myself, unfortunately.
>
> "git" is a three letter word.  I don't think there have been *any*
> three letter .com/.org/.net domains available for years.
>
> I see that Jonas Fonseca registered git-scm.org today...  I wonder
> what his plans are for that domain...

I've been useing the .hm domain for several years. some people who don't 
know what it means read it as 'home'. I see that git.hm is not allocated.

David Lang

Re: Git User's Survey 2007 summary - git homepage improvements

[Jonas Fonseca]

Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org> wrote Tue, Oct 16, 2007:
> Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz> wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 10:12:47PM +0200, Jan Hudec wrote:
> > > On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 00:56:18 +0200, Frank Lichtenheld wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 12:05:22AM +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:
> > > > > Generic:
> > > > >  # Dedicated domain name / site name, e.g. git.org or git.com
> ...
> > > > (And I guess something like git-scm.org wouldn't qualify as more
> > > > "official", would it?)
> > > 
> ...
> > If someone trustworthy in the community has the resources to sponsor the
> > domain, I will only be happy and gladly set it up on my side (I can run
> > the nameservers myself too, if required).  But I don't have the
> > resources for registering the domain myself, unfortunately.
> 
> "git" is a three letter word.  I don't think there have been *any*
> three letter .com/.org/.net domains available for years.
> 
> I see that Jonas Fonseca registered git-scm.org today...  I wonder
> what his plans are for that domain...

The plan is to use it for git propaganda in some form or another. :-)

If the list decides that it could be a better official name or simply an
alias (currently the case if I configured it correctly) to git.or.cz (or
whatever the list comes up with) I will gladly act as a domain sponsor.

Also, as time permits, I would like to get more involved in creating a
great online resource for git users and what better way to do that than
"homesteading the websphere".

-- 
Jonas Fonseca

Re: Git User's Survey 2007 summary - git homepage improvements

[Petr Baudis]

On Wed, Oct 17, 2007 at 01:11:36PM +0200, Jonas Fonseca wrote:
> If the list decides that it could be a better official name or simply an
> alias (currently the case if I configured it correctly) to git.or.cz (or
> whatever the list comes up with) I will gladly act as a domain sponsor.

I have configured it on my side too. git-scm.org now works. Thanks!

I'd have personally preferred git-vcs.org, but git-scm.org is cool too.
:-)

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
                -- James Thurber

Re: Git User's Survey 2007 summary - git homepage improvements

[Daniel Barkalow]

On Tue, 16 Oct 2007, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:

> Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz> wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 10:12:47PM +0200, Jan Hudec wrote:
> > > On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 00:56:18 +0200, Frank Lichtenheld wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 12:05:22AM +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:
> > > > > Generic:
> > > > >  # Dedicated domain name / site name, e.g. git.org or git.com
> ...
> > > > (And I guess something like git-scm.org wouldn't qualify as more
> > > > "official", would it?)
> > > 
> ...
> > If someone trustworthy in the community has the resources to sponsor the
> > domain, I will only be happy and gladly set it up on my side (I can run
> > the nameservers myself too, if required).  But I don't have the
> > resources for registering the domain myself, unfortunately.
> 
> "git" is a three letter word.  I don't think there have been *any*
> three letter .com/.org/.net domains available for years.

If anyone's in London, and could ask an Andy Ritchie nicely, 
http://git.org/ doesn't seem to be doing much, and we might be able to get 
a redirect.

	-Daniel
*This .sig left intentionally blank*

Re: Git User's Survey 2007 summary - git homepage improvements

[Petr Baudis]

On Wed, Oct 17, 2007 at 02:05:26AM +0200, Petr Baudis wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 10:12:47PM +0200, Jan Hudec wrote:
> > Note, that none of the other vcs' have a homepage at theirname.org --
> > subversion is svn.tigris.org, bazaar is bazaaz-vcs.org, mercurial is
> > www.selenic.com/mercurial, svk is svk.bestpractical.com, monotone is
> > monotone.ca. So git-vcs.org would be quite good.
> 
> If someone trustworthy in the community has the resources to sponsor the
> domain, I will only be happy and gladly set it up on my side (I can run
> the nameservers myself too, if required).  But I don't have the
> resources for registering the domain myself, unfortunately.

Ok, it turns out that I can get a domain arranged even for free, so if
someone has some fancy idea...

I wonder who took git-vcs.org. :-( Maybe some evil competing VCS? ;-)

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
                -- James Thurber

Re: Git User's Survey 2007 summary - git homepage improvements

[Petr Baudis]

On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 12:05:22AM +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:
> This website itself is tracked in Git as well - you can browse its
> development history or even clone it from
> http://repo.or.cz/r/git-homepage.git. The site is covered by GPLv2 and
> maintained by Petr Baudis who always takes patches eagerly. ;-)

Note that if someone is going to contribute to the homepage more
regularily, I can give him push access as well.

> Here is short summary of most common answers, with a short comment if
> appropriate:
> 
> Generic:
>  # Dedicated domain name / site name, e.g. git.org or git.com
>    to have it look less like mirror or unofficial page
> 
>    (git.or.cz still comes first when searching Google for "git";
>    current domain name was available to homepage admin - historical
>    reason)

See my other mail in this thread; if someone registers it, I can set
everything else up.

>  # Better design: make it prettier, easier to find information,
>    move more important things first, use sidebar instead of boxes,
>    perhaps divide it into separate pages (again). But make sure it
>    works on Elinks for example.
> 
>    (IIRC pasky is not web designer, so help is appreciated)

I'm not really unhappy with the current layout - I think it is pretty
enough but simple.  Dividing it to separate pages is question of taste
and opinitions simply differ; I personally think with the current amount
of information single page is fine. OTOH I think it would be nicer to
get more content on the page, then perhaps split it up. :-)

Sure, the webpage could be much prettier, with cute graphics and so on.
But I'm not a webdesigner and can't really do these things better than
how they already are. And is it really that bad?

> Documentation
>  # More documentation: tutorials, workflow examples, walkthroughs,
>    SCM commands comparison, interacting with other SCMs, HOWTOs, best
>    practices, recommended tools, fluxograms describing use cases
>    (graphics).  Make link to Git User's Manual stand out better.

Yes, please! Bring it on! ;-)

>  # Less emphasizis on Cogito, mark it more explicitely as deprecated
>    and slowly try to get rid of Cogito references in documentation
>    (e.g. crash courses).
> 
>    (Cogito is officially deprecated from not a long time; the process
>    of removing references to cg in crash courses is AFAIK ongoing)

Fixed, hopefully?

>  # Simple online demo. The demo could be an applet giving access to a
>    terminal of a running virtual machine with git and some demo
>    repositories.  The virtual machine is reset every full hour.
> 
>    (This might be a good idea, but I think it is a bit hard to do from
>    technical point of view; at least securely, securing against
>    intrusion and, perhaps accidental, denial of service)

Yes, and I don't think this is all that important since Git should be
readily available pre-packaged on all popular Linux distributions.

> Downloads:
>  # More up-to-date about new git versions.
> 
>    (With one person updating homepage, who is not git maintainer...)

That shouldn't have been a problem since May; there is a script being
run every 4 hours that syncs this up. If the homepage isn't picking a
release up in a timely fashion, that's a bug and I need to know about
it; I didn't notice anything like that yet, though.

>  # There should be links to download pu/next/master/maint branches
>    tar.gz trees (snapshots) from gitweb.
> 
>    (The source snapshot part is quite easy to do, but it might
>    increase load on kernel.org / repo.or.cz, unless snapshots are
>    somehow cached)

Why would anyone want this? Adding extra useless or seldom-used links to
the homepage is actually harmful, the important ones must not get lost
between those.

>  # Results of nightly builds and tests.
>    Static binaries for other OS (FreeBSD, MacOS X).
> 
>    (There is a matter of machine park. Somewhere those nightly builds,
>    perhaps together with nightly running of test suite, have to run.)

This is not something for the Git homepage itself. If someone volunteers
to run a tinderbox-like thing for Git, cool. I can link to it. ;-)

>  # Information about MS Windows version(s). Link to MSys Git, marking
>    it as under development; perhaps plea for help?

I'm not sure what in particular the MSys people want... They may want to
send patches, though. ;-)

Maybe we could merge the (largely artificially separated anyway)
subproject subsections to a single alphabetically-ordered subsection and
include MSysGit there?

>  # Provide processed man pages to install.
>    Provide PDF documentation, at least PDF version of Git User's Manual.
> 
>    (Having PDF version is quite new; there is no manual.pdf target in
>    official Makefile.)

I think it's more appropriate to link to this from inside the k.org Git
Manual site.

> Information, new links, new features
>  # Link to the latest release announcement (RelNotes) on download page.
> 
>    (Links to relnotes are in HTML version of git(7) manpage, but I
>    think it is not enough. Happily we _have_ release announcements)

Done.

>  # News section, info about where things are goung (roadmap)
> 
>    (Junio has a hard time maintaining TODO, and git doesn't have
>    roadmap AFAICT)

Maybe something like the News section could be nice, but someone else
would have to maintain it.

Then again, what would be the contents? Just aggregating recent
announces? Cc' posting-restricted mailing list on these and link to its
archives, and you will make more people happy.

>  # Provide 'A note from the maintainer' as a prominent link probably
>    named as 'How the git project is managed and how to participate'
> 
>    (That is a good idea I think, better than having it on GitWiki.
>    We can put direct link to SubmittingPatches nearby.)

Yes, got a patch from Michael Witten for this few days ago, applied now.
Thanks, Michael!

>  # Links to more tools, GUIs, version control interface layers.
>    A somewhat related request: copy pages like FAQ or Tips and Tricks,
>    or discussion about branches from GitWiki when they are mature
>    enough.
> 
>    (For example there was requests to put links to / info about Guilt
>    and Giggle on git homepage. Giggle has quite a bit of users among
>    GUIs).

I can't remember ever getting a patch. If I missed it, I'm sorry -
please resend.


> Code and design
>  * More prominent links to documentation on how to get started with
>    GIT.

How much more prominent can you be? :)

>  * The layout and the organization of the sections. It's pretty hard
>    to know why should I use git just looking at the webpage.

This is one of the things I tried to optimalize the layout to. If it
doesn't work, I'm sorry but I'm not getting it and you need to be more
concrete.

>  * Hide the rarer commands and special tricks deeper and emphasize the
>    best usage practices.

That's rather about the Git manual?

>  * Download link needs to stand out more. The homepage appears rather
>    'flat' that is nothing stands out as more important than the rest.

Maybe this improved a bit today.

>    In order of importance, I think there should be:
>      1. Download
>      2. Git Quickstart Guide
>      3. Documentation

Funnily enough, this _is_ the order in which the information flows.

>  * The lines are too long. Try to find a better proportion.

The sidebar would help here, I guess. Counter-argument is that sidebar
would take up space for the main content. ;-)

Opinions? Should the lines get a bit shorter? I'd almost agree.

>  * It doesn't look like a project home page.
>    Mercurial does a better job with the look of their page IMHO.

I actually find Mercurial's homepage much uglier, personally.

> Documentation

Many suggestions here are for the Git manual, actually; that's a good
sign that the integration isn't working so badly after all.

>  * 'git for svn/cvs people' could use an overhaul
>    (at least they did a few months ago)
>    The Git for SVN users tutorial is incomplete and does not explain
>    for example how the index works and why it's there. Thus people end
>    up thinking that 'svn add' is like 'git add' whereas it's not.

Yes, this would be nice to get improved; however, the surgery needs to
be very careful in order to avoid complicating or confusing things up
too much - I already got few patches that tried, but the end result
wasn't really working well. Maybe the whole crash course should just be
rewritten along the lines of the Git tutorial?

>  * Add some material for presenting git to others (slides)
>  * Perhaps making some pages like FAQ or Tips and Tricks, or
>    discussion about nature of branches in git taken from GitWiki when
>    they are mature enough

This touches a subject that I'm kind of surprised wasn't mentioned more,
that is the homepage-wiki duality. Are people happy with the current
setup? I kinda am, or would be if I got more patches. ;-) I'm personally
not too fond of having project's main homepage in wiki -
*especially* if it's made obvious by half of the screen space being
occupied by wiki-generated metalinks. But if everyone else thinks that
we should just move the main page to a wiki format, I won't stay in the
way.

I'd like to use this space to also repeat that I never seriously
intended to maintain the technical side of the wiki, I've set up just
because it was so damn easy. I have grown to just hate the wiki engine
we use, and if someone wants to take the wiki over, you are welcome!

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
                -- James Thurber

Re: Git User's Survey 2007 summary - git homepage improvements

[Jakub Narebski]

On 10/17/07, Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 15, 2007 at 12:05:22AM +0200, Jakub Narebski wrote:

>>  # Information about MS Windows version(s). Link to MSys Git, marking
>>    it as under development; perhaps plea for help?
>
> I'm not sure what in particular the MSys people want... They may want to
> send patches, though. ;-)
>
> Maybe we could merge the (largely artificially separated anyway)
> subproject subsections to a single alphabetically-ordered subsection and
> include MSysGit there?

I was thinking more about adding link to MSysGit / GitMe / WInGit in the
"Getting Git"/"Binaries" section. I'm not sure what people who put this response
in survey want...

>>  * Perhaps making some pages like FAQ or Tips and Tricks, or
>>    discussion about nature of branches in git taken from GitWiki when
>>    they are mature enough
>
> This touches a subject that I'm kind of surprised wasn't mentioned more,
> that is the homepage-wiki duality. Are people happy with the current
> setup? I kinda am, or would be if I got more patches. ;-) I'm personally
> not too fond of having project's main homepage in wiki -
> *especially* if it's made obvious by half of the screen space being
> occupied by wiki-generated metalinks. But if everyone else thinks that
> we should just move the main page to a wiki format, I won't stay in the
> way.
>
> I'd like to use this space to also repeat that I never seriously
> intended to maintain the technical side of the wiki, I've set up just
> because it was so damn easy. I have grown to just hate the wiki engine
> we use, and if someone wants to take the wiki over, you are welcome!

I'm very happy with homepage / wiki separation. IMVHO having wiki for
homepage is not a very good decision. I thought that wiki would be
more staging area for homepage, and that some content after maturing
would be put on homepage.

-- 
Jakub Narebski