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A List Apart: Get started with Git
- bbsabelli 16y agoIf you use textmate: git diff | mate -
- bluesnowmonkey 16y agoIt works without the trailing slash too, if you want to save a couple of keystrokes. git diff | mate
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- blaix 16y agoWhat is the trailing slash for?
- pyre 16y agoA lot of command-line programs that operate on files take '-' as placeholder for stdin or stdout. For example: wget -O - 'http://news.ycombinator.com' | less The -O option is for specifying an output file, but the '-' says to dump the contents to stdout.
- blaix 16y agoThanks! Always enjoy adding to my command line tool belt.
- pjscott 16y agoFunny; I always use the curl command for that kind of thing, since it automatically pipes to stdout -- but there's something fun you can do with that, too: curl http://example.com/foo.tar.gz | tar zxf - Tar's input file is "-", which means stdin. This downloads and decompresses a tarball to the current directory, without creating a temporary file that I have to delete later.
- hfinney 16y ago- = dash not slash
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- theycallmemorty 16y agoYou can also change your git options to use a different diff tool.
- duck 16y agoThe best part of Git? More and more people are using version control and a lot of them aren't even developers. Just like Rails, the community and the social effect (aka GitHub) have made this possible.
- 9ec4c12949a4f3 16y agoI've suggested people use it for their office documents.
- bilban 16y agoAlthough I like the CLI interface to some of these tools, I think to get people using them you need nice GUI tools and sadly these are lacking - or rather they were when I last looked.
- pstuart 16y agoFor git, perhaps, but subversion has Tortoise SVN which integrates nicely with windows explorer. And I just googled before posting, but it looks like it's been ported to git: http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit
- bilban 16y agoI was trying to turn on some applers to the joy of svn, and the tools at the time were immature, though that was two years back. Tortoise was great on windows though. I thought GIT didn't play well with windows - so a git-tortoise would be welcome. The article at least implies that you'd be better off on the command line and it's not that bad. But my experience is that to others it can be a turn off.
- bostonvaulter2 16y agoTortoiseGit is pretty usable on windows. You should try it. http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/ http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- 9ec4c12949a4f3 16y agoI'm glad to see the increase in GIT tutorials, about a year or two ago there wasn't anything out there except confusing circles that you spin in for people who already know GIT. Perhaps a blog like the daily VIM might be a great idea for any keen hackers out there.
- eru 16y agoI started git earlier than a year ago. You can just read the documentation that comes with git. It's understandable (at least if you are a hacker).
- 9ec4c12949a4f3 16y agoSorry I didn't precisely mean understandable. I mean that's now how your average user wants to learn the system. If I can't figure it out in 3 minutes I go "screw this, it's complicated" and go away back to "File-> save as-> TheEntireProject-Backup2-version8-March11-2009.code" again. But maybe I shouldn't be concerned with programmers like that.
- eru 16y agoYou were right that git wasn't approachable for normal people.
- shubber 16y agoI'm really tired of Git standing in for "DVCS" - there are so many better options. Bazaar, Mecurial, Monotone, Fossil - check those out. The only win I see in git is the adoption rate. Which doesn't seem like a real win, just populist shackling.
- apl 16y agoWould you mind explaining why Git is inferior?
- expeditious 16y agoA complaint I regularly hear is that it's user interface is frought with peril (and has some poorly-chosen defaults).
- nuclear_eclipse 16y ago"Poorly chosen defaults" is also a synonym for "doesn't work like SVN/HG/BZR".
- expeditious 16y agoI'd suggest that well-chosen defaults means: Make a pretty good guess at the most common usage patterns you expect most of your users to follow, and have your defaults do that by default. I can't comment on whether or not svn/hg/bzr/git/darcs have well-chosen defaults. I only know that I hear it's a common complaint about git.
- jrockway 16y agoI've used git since the early days, and I have trouble using svn and p4 now. Subversion and Perforce should choose better defaults.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- alexwestholm 16y agoMercurial is another feature rich DVCS. Joel Spolsky has done an excellent job of providing a similar beginner-friendly introduction at http://hginit.com http://hginit.com. It's short, easy to understand, and pretty funny in places.