From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Junio C Hamano Subject: Re: understanding how remote tracking works Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2010 12:31:32 -0700 Message-ID: <7vaaov60rv.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> References: <20100809021900.GA10596@burratino> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Cc: Michael Witten , geoffrey.russell@gmail.com, Ralf Ebert , git@vger.kernel.org To: Jonathan Nieder X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Mon Aug 09 21:32:04 2010 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 1OiY4k-0006qo-Oa for gcvg-git-2@lo.gmane.org; Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:31:59 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754934Ab0HITbx convert rfc822-to-quoted-printable (ORCPT ); Mon, 9 Aug 2010 15:31:53 -0400 Received: from a-pb-sasl-quonix.pobox.com ([208.72.237.25]:36530 "EHLO sasl.smtp.pobox.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754829Ab0HITbw convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Mon, 9 Aug 2010 15:31:52 -0400 Received: from sasl.smtp.pobox.com (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by a-pb-sasl-quonix.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0FD2CCC868; Mon, 9 Aug 2010 15:31:52 -0400 (EDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed; d=pobox.com; h=to:cc:subject :references:from:date:in-reply-to:message-id:mime-version :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; s=sasl; bh=9TPg+B76jsRp YqqQch03t0Y0OTc=; b=mneYdQRgC/cU/CJDvxWGG6+udAzGkpC/r2QWxBBwz6uJ kEuidVyJQbIftIPwaj60z4rcpa7rEwIE+XfSqWqZGToI6LY7t5yWEGzQBks3yls2 vogOSJ46VAMAmZWNoUAdPZrIG7l0X0YkG5YidVrHpxqX8PfJVaRTSABIrsHo2IQ= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=pobox.com; h=to:cc:subject :references:from:date:in-reply-to:message-id:mime-version :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; q=dns; s=sasl; b=dfb2M5 8sxR7dQC9Eu/sM8cZzG/BDEjp7OXATMX08FVwSNk027o7gyEB0vxeUs8AzsrnyKO bP7y5ZL5QMdHpJx8FU7N9wQG8P2D92S65MH/s7nYIcxZqWQ8NF2CjaDFXMdzTCjz Oh4O4jY8yHW0SnaodYl/tsNsv6tiogvni/ZhY= Received: from a-pb-sasl-quonix. (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by a-pb-sasl-quonix.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A89D5CC863; Mon, 9 Aug 2010 15:31:46 -0400 (EDT) Received: from pobox.com (unknown [76.102.170.126]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by a-pb-sasl-quonix.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 71E89CC853; Mon, 9 Aug 2010 15:31:38 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <20100809021900.GA10596@burratino> (Jonathan Nieder's message of "Sun\, 8 Aug 2010 21\:19\:00 -0500") User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.2 (gnu/linux) X-Pobox-Relay-ID: BF9B2608-A3EC-11DF-BE22-9056EE7EF46B-77302942!a-pb-sasl-quonix.pobox.com Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Jonathan Nieder writes: > Michael Witten wrote: >> On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 20:53, Geoff Russell wrote: > >>> I'm working my way through Jon Loeliger's Git book and it's >>> confusing when the actual behaviour differs from that in the book >> >> This probably results from the git culture's conflation (or should I >> say confusion?) of low-level and high-level representations and >> commands. > > I guess I=E2=80=99ll bite. What does that mean? We have =E2=80=9Csh= ow-ref=E2=80=9D and > =E2=80=9Cupdate-ref=E2=80=9D precisely as low-level commands that are= independent > of representation. I tend to agree with Michael (modulo s/ culture/'s early&/) here. Many documents written in the early days, the "tutorial" document by Linus being the most prominent example, were written in a way to focus exposi= ng the implementation details to show how simple the structure is. These documents and tips by early adopters, simply by virtue of being old, ar= e found more easily by search engines. Later we started encouraging use = of show-ref and update-ref to isolate users from the implementation detail= s that can be changed for performance reasons. > Probably the more relevant question: what do you want to do about it? Continue the current course of encouraging the use of plumbing commands and not looking at the low-level implementation detail. Perhaps help people update their documents, moving stale descriptions into "historic= al note" sections.