Re: Revert behavior [Was: Re: [ANNOUNCE] yap: Yet Another (Git) Porcelain]

["Steven Walter" <stevenrwalter@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Sep 9, 2008 at 12:37 PM, Govind Salinas
<govind@sophiasuchtig.com> wrote:
> My take on this comes from my own personal experience with "revert"
> commands, the fact that "how do i undo my working dir changes" is
> the most common question I see on the list and that I have heard
> others with the same complaint.
>
> I will concede that revert usually means both "discard current working
> dir changes" and "undo a previous change" in different circumstances.
> However, the number of times that "how do i discard my working
> dir changes" comes up on the list leads me to believe that you get
> the most out of using revert for this, since it is something that should
> be familiar to a user and undoing a previous commit is more rare.
>
> Of course, this is where I would use a DWIM-ism.
> "pyt revert -r commitish" would generate a reverse patch but
> "pyt revert <paths>..." would checkout from HEAD.  "pyt revert" would
> just "git reset --hard".

In yap, "revert" is used to discard working copy changes.  "revert -a"
reverts all changes; just "revert" replies "nothing to do."  Having
"pyt revert" = "git reset --hard" makes me queasy; especially in
Dvorak it's all too easy to hit Enter when reaching for '/'; seems
like a catastrophe waiting to happen.

I tend to dislike "DWIM" in interfaces, because the computer cannot
read your mind, and can therefore never know with certainty what I
mean.  Especially in cases where the computer thinks I intend to
perform an irreversible operation, I want the computer to ask first.
Not only that, but I think having one command that does 10 different
things is as confusing as 10 commands that each do one thing.  My
philosophy has been to identify frequent operations and give them
sensible commands, rather than overloading a handful of operations or
requiring multiple commands for common tasks.  My philosophy has also
been not to wrap every command.  If a user were to ask me, "I want to
bisect a changeset," my response would be "okay, use git bisect."  If
the user wants such a specialized command as that, then they shouldn't
have trouble with dealing directly with git for that operation.
-- 
-Steven Walter <stevenrwalter@gmail.com>
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance
accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders,
give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new
problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight
efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
 -Robert Heinlein