From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Holger Hellmuth Subject: Re: Command-line interface thoughts Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:07:12 +0200 Message-ID: <4DF25D50.5020107@ira.uka.de> References: <201106051311.00951.jnareb@gmail.com> <201106082056.38774.jnareb@gmail.com> <4DF0B4B2.7080007@ira.uka.de> <201106101844.16146.jnareb@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Jonathan Nieder , Michael J Gruber , Junio C Hamano , Scott Chacon , Michael Nahas , git@vger.kernel.org To: Jakub Narebski X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Fri Jun 10 20:06:19 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.180.67]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1QV667-0008VH-0D for gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org; Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:06:19 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1757735Ab1FJSGO (ORCPT ); Fri, 10 Jun 2011 14:06:14 -0400 Received: from iramx2.ira.uni-karlsruhe.de ([141.3.10.81]:48197 "EHLO iramx2.ira.uni-karlsruhe.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752889Ab1FJSGN (ORCPT ); Fri, 10 Jun 2011 14:06:13 -0400 Received: from irams1.ira.uni-karlsruhe.de ([141.3.10.5]) by iramx2.ira.uni-karlsruhe.de with esmtps port 25 id 1QV65l-0003L6-Ta; Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:06:05 +0200 Received: from i20s141.iaks.uni-karlsruhe.de ([141.3.32.141] helo=[172.16.22.120]) by irams1.ira.uni-karlsruhe.de with esmtpsa port 25 id 1QV65l-0001qu-HN; Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:05:57 +0200 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110414 SUSE/3.1.10 Thunderbird/3.1.10 In-Reply-To: <201106101844.16146.jnareb@gmail.com> X-ATIS-AV: ClamAV (irams1.ira.uni-karlsruhe.de) X-ATIS-AV: ClamAV (iramx2.ira.uni-karlsruhe.de) X-ATIS-AV: Kaspersky (iramx2.ira.uni-karlsruhe.de) X-ATIS-Timestamp: iramx2.ira.uni-karlsruhe.de 1307729165.219839000 Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: On 10.06.2011 18:44, Jakub Narebski wrote: > On Thu, 9 Jun 2011, Holger Hellmuth wrote: >> Also there are no good words for what someone wants to see in this case. >> At least I would assume the git project would have found them if they >> existed. '--cached' is definitely not one of them. But we have fitting >> and widely known names for the targets, i.e 'working tree', 'index' and >> 'head'. > > "I want to see if there are any remiaining changes", "I want to see what > 'git commit' would bring", "I want to see what 'git commit -a' would bring". > Neither of those is about targets for diff. Are you proposing a command "git --I-want-to-see-if-there-are-any-remaining-changes" ? ;-). I was looking for short command or parameter names that are easy to remember, not for definitions of the output of cryptic commands. But lets see. If I didn't know much git, where would I look for the right command for your three needs? Where would I expect the solution? (note I'm not proposing any of these commands) "I want to see if there are any remiaining changes"? git status git status --full git status --detailed "I want to see what 'git commit' would bring" git commit --dry-run "I want to see what 'git commit -a' would bring" git commit -a --dry-run Now I'll add a question I would want to ask: "I want to see the changes between what I have in my working tree and what I already added to the index" git diff WTREE INDEX Btw. even the 'git diff' man page emphasizes that diff is about a comparision between two things. Citation: "Show changes *between* two trees, a tree and the working tree, a tree and the index file,...". > [...] >>> The "git diff NEXT WTREE" looks like training wheels to me. And like >>> training wheels they could become obstacles and not help to learning >>> git. Neverthemind they can snag on sharp corners^W corner-cases. ;-))) >> >> If your goal is that anyone who uses git is a git expert, they may be a >> hindrance (as are all the porcelain commands really). If you also want >> to make git friendly to people who will never get past intermediate or >> beginner stage or will only use a small part of git or use git seldomly, >> training wheels are good. > > Those "training wheels" are useless for beginner, and might be not very > useful to middle expert user either, depending on corner cases. "useless for beginner". No reasoning, just a fat road block for my opinion? As git expert you are so far removed from any beginner status. Are you sure you still know how a beginner thinks? Holger.