From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: [PATCH] user-manual: set user.name and user.email with repo-config Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 16:32:14 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: References: <20070127062826.GE14205@fieldses.org> <20070128002246.GA10179@moooo.ath.cx> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cc: "J. Bruce Fields" , git@vger.kernel.org To: Matthias Lederhofer X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Sun Jan 28 01:32:30 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git@gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1HAxy9-0002Ft-Jd for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Sun, 28 Jan 2007 01:32:29 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932247AbXA1AcX (ORCPT ); Sat, 27 Jan 2007 19:32:23 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932248AbXA1AcX (ORCPT ); Sat, 27 Jan 2007 19:32:23 -0500 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.24]:40203 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932247AbXA1AcW (ORCPT ); Sat, 27 Jan 2007 19:32:22 -0500 Received: from shell0.pdx.osdl.net (fw.osdl.org [65.172.181.6]) by smtp.osdl.org (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id l0S0WG1m024278 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168 verify=NO); Sat, 27 Jan 2007 16:32:17 -0800 Received: from localhost (shell0.pdx.osdl.net [10.9.0.31]) by shell0.pdx.osdl.net (8.13.1/8.11.6) with ESMTP id l0S0WEap019495; Sat, 27 Jan 2007 16:32:16 -0800 In-Reply-To: <20070128002246.GA10179@moooo.ath.cx> X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-2.469 required=5 tests=AWL,OSDL_HEADER_SUBJECT_BRACKETED,PATCH_SUBJECT_OSDL X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.63-osdl_revision__1.111__ X-MIMEDefang-Filter: osdl$Revision: 1.172 $ X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.36 Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: On Sun, 28 Jan 2007, Matthias Lederhofer wrote: > > There are some other places where direct editing of .git/config is > suggested. I'd rather tell the user to use repo-config and add a note > that repo-config saves the configuration to .git/config (or > ~/.gitconfig with --global) which can be edited by hand too. > cat .git/config to show the remote configuration can be replaced by > git-repo-config -l | grep '^remote\.' I dunno. I really think that editing the config file is actually simpler. The "git repo-config" thing is really usefull from scripting, and for general automation, but maybe it's just me - I find human-readable ASCII files that you can put comments in etc just *nice*. I think the whole notion that you have to use a tool to edit configurations is asinine. It's good to have a tool for automation, but it's bad if that's the only way to interact with the system. The first time I had to use AIX, and realized that they do everything with some crazy system management tool, and that you can't do anything by editing files in /etc, I realized that IBM was totally incompetent when it came to UNIX. I mean, do people _really_ think that it's easier to do black magic scripts like git repo-config --global user.name "Your Name Comes Here" (which not only looks scary, but means that the user will never learn about the git config file at all), or just somebody saying: "Fill your .git/config file with [user] name = Your Name Here email = your@email.example and be happy" I'm just saying that the second example seems to not only be more human-friendly, it actually teaches people something that "git repo-config" never did. Maybe most users will just do what they are told without thinking about it, but then some users will look at that and say "Ahh, there's a .git/config file, I wonder what else I could do there.." Linus