Re: help: bisect single file from repos

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

walter harms <wharms@bfs.de> writes:

> Christian Couder schrieb:
> ...
> i am sorry, i am not familiar with git and when i am stating i am looking
> for examples first. the examples in my man page are like
> git bisect start v2.6.20-rc6 v2.6.20-rc4
> there is nothing like:
> git bisect start 6a87a68a6a8 65a76a8a68a7
>
> I ASSUME that you can use tags like "v2.6.20-rc6" and commit-id like "6a87a68a6a8"
> interchangeable but that was not clear from beginning.

The misconception here is "naming commit is done completely differently
from naming branches and tags", which is false in the git land, but it may
hold true in some other systems (e.g. Subversion, which made them into
different dimensions by making branches and tags into a location in a
larger whole tree namespace when their commits are named by serial version
number of that whole tree namespace).

We can call this a misconception, tell users to learn how things work
before using git (sometimes unlearning CVS and Subversion helps for this
exact reason), dismiss the issue and move on.  But I wonder if there is
something we _could_ have done better in the documentation area to avoid
this from the beginning, iow, make it easier to "learn how things work
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 from
"usability" and "friendly to new people" advocates.