From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: SZEDER =?iso-8859-1?Q?G=E1bor?= Subject: Re: help: bisect single file from repos Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 02:28:55 +0100 Message-ID: <20091209012855.GA3208@neumann> References: <4B1CFC4C.6090406@bfs.de> <4B1D1A5A.9060004@drmicha.warpmail.net> <4B1D27B6.7010900@bfs.de> <200912080917.17220.chriscool@tuxfamily.org> <4B1E5796.2090201@bfs.de> <7vein5e2lc.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Cc: git@vger.kernel.org, Christian Couder , Michael J Gruber , wharms@bfs.de To: Junio C Hamano X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Wed Dec 09 02:29:17 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1NIBMi-0004Od-Gs for gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org; Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:29:16 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S967086AbZLIB24 convert rfc822-to-quoted-printable (ORCPT ); Tue, 8 Dec 2009 20:28:56 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S967076AbZLIB24 (ORCPT ); Tue, 8 Dec 2009 20:28:56 -0500 Received: from moutng.kundenserver.de ([212.227.17.10]:53970 "EHLO moutng.kundenserver.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S967072AbZLIB2z (ORCPT ); Tue, 8 Dec 2009 20:28:55 -0500 Received: from [127.0.1.1] (p5B1309F9.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [91.19.9.249]) by mrelayeu.kundenserver.de (node=mrbap1) with ESMTP (Nemesis) id 0LwGGE-1O9GDe2KmU-017UcL; Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:28:58 +0100 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <7vein5e2lc.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) X-Provags-ID: V01U2FsdGVkX1/7vhgxZ+HTRQzU9QIvb262FoaD3/k53diPAfL 9o9QlmiBkphL/d6JatQtur4431bnPmOhce2OoTYJyV4O9BYjzM aN4B//hQP8W6+tCYd5anw== Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Hi, On Tue, Dec 08, 2009 at 10:35:11AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote: > But I wonder if there is > something we _could_ have done better in the documentation area to av= oid > this from the beginning, iow, make it easier to "learn how things wor= k > before using"? I think there is a lesson to be learned by us in here= , and > I'd like to hear comments and improvement suggestions, especially fro= m > "usability" and "friendly to new people" advocates. when a git command accepts a commit as command line option, the documentation usually refers to the "Specifying revisions" section of 'git rev-parse's docs for "a more complete list of ways to spell commits"[1]. Even the docs of porcelain commands and the user manual do that. But 'git rev-parse' is plumbing, and we actively advertise that avarage users don't really need to know about plumbing at all. While new to git I repeatedly encountered this reference to 'git rev-parse' all over the porcelain manpages, and it was a real burden for me back then. I was like "but I don't want to know about all the glory details, just give me a short summary". I think the user should not refer to plumbing manpages to be able to use porcelain commands. Therefore, the manpage of every command accepting a commit option need to have a section about specifying these commits. This section doesn't need to be as detailed as 'git rev-parse'; perhaps we don't need to discuss the ^{} notation there. Also, the precedence in case of an ambiguous symbolic ref name should be described without reference to the internal $GIT_DIR/refs/ directory structure. =46urthermore, some manpages use the term "", while others "" or "". The same term should be used everywhere. Best, G=E1bor [1] - 'git cherry-pick' doc says the following: Commit to cherry-pick. For a more complete list of ways to spell commits, see the "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section in git-rev-parse(1)= =2E What? "A _more_ complete list"!? Well, it's not very hard to be more complete than this, there is not a single way described here (;