5 ms·

The 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 eff

by duck 16y ago

The 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 ago
I've suggested people use it for their office documents.
- bilban 16y ago
  Although 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 ago
    For 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 ago
      I 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 ago
        TortoiseGit is pretty usable on windows. You should try it. http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/ http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/
      - eru 16y ago
        Git used to play badly with Windows. It does fine now.
      - trafficlight 16y ago
        My only gripe are the icon overlays. I still get randomly missing overlays.
  - grayrest 16y ago
    If you're on OS X, bortherbard's fork of gitx might work if you're looking for a graphical option: http://github.com/brotherbard/gitx/downloads http://github.com/brotherbard/gitx/downloads I don't actually use it to commit because I have a screwy commit flow, but I'd expect it to work for a basic commit cycle.
jamesbritt 16y ago
"The best part of Git? More and more people are using version control and a lot of them aren't even developers" At assorted Web design/development gatherings I've seen a big divide between coders types, almost all of whom use some form of version control, and designer type, whose idea of version control is the periodic use of winzip or stuffit. Having more articles like this is Designer Land is fantastic. I would urge developers who work with designers to consider arranging some sort of presentation, perhaps at lunch, about version control. Spread the love.
- RK 16y ago
  I think the analogy with Wikipedia is a pretty good one for explaining version control to people who have no idea what it is. Often web savvy types have at least seen the history of a Wikipedia article before and can use that as a reference.
spacemanaki 16y ago
How well does git handle non-text files like .psd and .ai files?
- ams1 16y ago
  It can handle whatever you put into it, but obviously won't be able to diff them.
  - eru 16y ago
    Can you provide your own diff-programs for different binary formats?
    - jrockway 16y ago
      Of course. Git knows about three things; blobs, trees, and commits. A blob is a collection of bytes. It is stored on disk as a file containing the bytes named after the sha1 hash of the bytes. A tree is a set of mappings from name to a blob or a tree, allowing you to represent collections of blobs like they exist on disk. Finally, the commit object is some metadata (author, committer, date, message, etc.) and a tree object. Add some shell or Perl scripts on top of this, and you have Git. So if you can write a simple shell script, you can make git do whatever you want it to do. (That's why git seems so "messy" from an implementation standpoint, it's a bunch of shell and perl scripts that do random things. Darcs and Mercurial have a slightly more complicated model, and hence everything has to happen "inside". This results in a cleaner looking interface, but a lot less hackability.)
- stellar678 16y ago
  I have a git repo that seems to do fine handling binary files of 1-200 megabytes that regularly update. The downside is that the repo grows by that much every time I update the file. The upside is that I get a version history if I need to back out to an older version!
  - ryanpetrich 16y ago

by duck 16y ago

9ec4c12949a4f3 16y ago

I've suggested people use it for their office documents.

bilban 16y ago
Although 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 ago
  For 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 ago
    I 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 ago
      TortoiseGit is pretty usable on windows. You should try it. http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/ http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/
    - eru 16y ago
      Git used to play badly with Windows. It does fine now.
    - trafficlight 16y ago
      My only gripe are the icon overlays. I still get randomly missing overlays.
- grayrest 16y ago
  If you're on OS X, bortherbard's fork of gitx might work if you're looking for a graphical option: http://github.com/brotherbard/gitx/downloads http://github.com/brotherbard/gitx/downloads I don't actually use it to commit because I have a screwy commit flow, but I'd expect it to work for a basic commit cycle.

jamesbritt 16y ago

"The best part of Git? More and more people are using version control and a lot of them aren't even developers" At assorted Web design/development gatherings I've seen a big divide between coders types, almost all of whom use some form of version control, and designer type, whose idea of version control is the periodic use of winzip or stuffit. Having more articles like this is Designer Land is fantastic. I would urge developers who work with designers to consider arranging some sort of presentation, perhaps at lunch, about version control. Spread the love.

RK 16y ago
I think the analogy with Wikipedia is a pretty good one for explaining version control to people who have no idea what it is. Often web savvy types have at least seen the history of a Wikipedia article before and can use that as a reference.

spacemanaki 16y ago

How well does git handle non-text files like .psd and .ai files?

ams1 16y ago
It can handle whatever you put into it, but obviously won't be able to diff them.
- eru 16y ago
  Can you provide your own diff-programs for different binary formats?
  - jrockway 16y ago
    Of course. Git knows about three things; blobs, trees, and commits. A blob is a collection of bytes. It is stored on disk as a file containing the bytes named after the sha1 hash of the bytes. A tree is a set of mappings from name to a blob or a tree, allowing you to represent collections of blobs like they exist on disk. Finally, the commit object is some metadata (author, committer, date, message, etc.) and a tree object. Add some shell or Perl scripts on top of this, and you have Git. So if you can write a simple shell script, you can make git do whatever you want it to do. (That's why git seems so "messy" from an implementation standpoint, it's a bunch of shell and perl scripts that do random things. Darcs and Mercurial have a slightly more complicated model, and hence everything has to happen "inside". This results in a cleaner looking interface, but a lot less hackability.)
stellar678 16y ago
I have a git repo that seems to do fine handling binary files of 1-200 megabytes that regularly update. The downside is that the repo grows by that much every time I update the file. The upside is that I get a version history if I need to back out to an older version!
- ryanpetrich 16y ago