Re: [PATCH] Documentation: add a planning document for the next CLI revamp

[Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 08:48:05PM -0700, Sam Vilain wrote:
> From: Sam Vilain <samv@vilain.net>
> 
> For cross-command CLI changes to be effective, they need to be
> cohesively planned.  Add a planning document for this next set of
> changes.

Here are my favorites:

* Add the command "git revert-file <files>" which is syntactic sugar for:

        git checkout HEAD -- <files>

  Rationale: Many other SCM's have a way of undoing local edits to a
  file very simply, i.e."hg revert <file>" or "svn revert <file>", and
  for many developers's workflow, it's useful to be able to undo local
  edits to a single file, but not to everything else in the working
  directory.  And "git checkout HEAD -- <file>" is rather cumbersome
  to type, and many beginning users don't find it intuitive to look in
  the "git-checkout" man page for instructions on how to revert a
  local file.

* Change the argument handling for "git format-patch" so it is
  consistent with everything else which takes a set of commits.  Yes,
  it means that where people have gotten used to typing "git
  format-patch origin", they'll have to type instead: "git
  format-patch origin..", but's much more consistent.  We've done the
  best we can by documenting the existing behavior, but if'we re going
  to make major, potentially incompatible, CLI changes, this is
  something to at least consider.  Maybe with a config file for people
  who really don't want to retrain their fingers to type the two extra
  periods?

						- Ted