Re: [doc] User Manual Suggestion

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 08:53:37PM -0400, David Abrahams wrote:

>> Actually, it is not the generally of trees that I think is interesting
>> there, but the generality of _objects_. That is, each of those things is
>> a first-class object, and has a unique name by which it can be  
>> referred.
>
> I'm sorry, but I think most people would find that so unremarkable that 
> making a big deal about it would lead to "what am I missing here"  
> confusion.  Maybe a person who's exclusively used CVS (or older)  
> technologies before coming to Git would be happy to know that, but it's 
> sort of obvious.  In CVS the lack of first-class directories sticks out 
> like a sore thumb.

Sadly, I was away from email all weekend and so missed the ensuing storm
in this thread. :) However, I did want to respond to this one point.

To me (and I am talking from personal experience, so it really may be
_just_ me), an important part of understanding git was understanding the
object storage. That is, half of the idea of git is a big database of
content-addressable objects. The _other_ half is the actual VCS built on
top of it. ;)

And by understanding that, and the places where objects refer to each
other (commits point to other commits and to trees, trees point to
blobs, blobs are always leaves), I find it easier to understand what
each operation is doing. And that if I'm unsure of something, I can
always inspect it at many levels.

I don't know. Maybe that is too low-level for most people. I did end up
working on git, so perhaps I am inordinately interested.

-Peff