Re: Cleaning up git user-interface warts

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 13:45:58 -0800 (PST), Linus Torvalds wrote:

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006, Carl Worth wrote:

quoted

Well, one of the problems is that with current git I can teach, (and I
have), that there's a conceptual:

	pull = fetch + merge

But then shortly after I have to teach an interface notion:

	merge = pull .

This is why I would suggest teaching the _concept_ of the "merge", and not
the actual command.

I don't think you should basically ever use the "git merge" command
itself, not in teaching, and not in real life.

I think that's just and accident of git-merge having such a bad
syntax, (requiring a merge message, not using -m for that, requiring
two heads instead of defaulting to current, etc.). So the result is
accepting another bad syntax "pull ." for an operation that really is
merge.

Once you've explained the _concept_ of merging, you then introduce the
command to actually _execute_ the merge: it's "git pull".

I think we'll be doing better when there is a stronger correlation
between the concepts of the operations and the command names for
carrying them out.

Plus, when I'm teaching "fetch everything first, then manipulate it
locally", (which is what I teach, since that's the only way I use
git), then the "." looks really out of place when I teach the 'merge'
command. I end up saying, "Oh, that's there because you could do the
fetch and merge all in one step if you really wanted, but I never do
that.".

And that's because I _do_ teach fetch first, as you've suggested.

changes from both branches. So it's a _conceptual_ issue, and that's why I
said I think you should just totally gloss over the whole issue of "git
merge" syntax.

That doesn't work. I know I went looking at the git-merge
documentation when I started to learn git. "It can't really be this
hard, can it?" was my reaction to it. And then only after attending a
tutorial did I learn that "pull ." is the way it's really done.

That's nothing more than a user-interface trap for new users, plain
and simple.

The real fix is to stop glossing over git-merge and just give it a
usable syntax.

-Carl