Re: [PATCH 1/2] user-manual: Simplify the user configuration.

[Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 10:54 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> This is shorter, avoids the burder to think about the format of the
>> configuration file, and git config is already used in other places in
>> the manual.
>
> I am moderately against changing this part to use "git config".
>
> We traditionally introduced how to set configuration variables first by
> editing it in an editor, and this was quite deliberate, in order to show
> how the configuration file looks like, to demonstrate that there is no
> deep magic in the file format, and to explain that it is perfectly Ok to
> edit it without using "git config" command.
>
> I actually wish this section appeared a lot earlier in the document, but
> that is a separate issue.

I agree that it's good that people get familiar with the config
format, and that it should appear earlier in the document, perhaps as
a separate section. However, for new users that just want to get
started any extra burden weighs in the misconception that git is not
user friendly.

I read the comments in both threads Jeff pointed out and I have
comments regarding the argument that it's easy to edit a text file.

It's easy to *change* a text file, not so much to write something by
hand. Although the user would probably just copy-paste the text from
the online manual (changing spaces by a tag in the process) there's a
possibility that the manual is printed.

This brings back my previous question: where is the home directory in
a Windows system?

An idea would be to add an --edit option to git config, so the users
don't need to care about the location of the text file and just do
"git config --global --edit" which would bring the editor. Although
I'm not sure how that would work on Windows since the editor is
probably not properly configured at that point.

Now, *nobody* has replied back the comments of providing both the git
config command and .gitconfig snip. It was mentioned in both threads
and ignored.

Anyone against that?

-- 
Felipe Contreras