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Overall IMO, Git is so good that if you have a problem with usability, it's better to work on a wrapper around Git than it is to change Git itself. Maybe a pla

Overall IMO, Git is so good that if you have a problem with usability, it's better to work on a wrapper around Git than it is to change Git itself. Maybe a plain English tool that just lets you click through menus to dictate what you want to do. No Git lingo whatsoever. Very rough examples below: 1) "I want to save my progress". (combination of git add and git commit) 2) "I want to go back before my previous save." (`git revert` on your last commit) 3) "I want to upload my latest work." (git push) 4) "I want to pull in any new updates." (git pull) ...Et cetera. Stuff that's basic enough to satisfy some basic use cases. Then, for anything more complicated than this basic subset, users have to whip out the terminal. The balance between basic and complicated, and too little vs too much, might take time to figure out.

usr1106 5y ago
I fully agree. The challenge here might be if it's not a single user repo, how does the simple frontend deal with tricky cases introduced by other users?
- oneepic 5y ago
  It probably wouldn't deal with it "well enough". Although, any errors or validation failures would point the user to use git commands to restore peace and order before using the tool again.
martinvonz 5y ago
The CLI could be simpler without making it less powerful. For example, "the index" should not be visible to the user, IMO. The usecases it enables can be achieved with a simpler CLI (like Mercurial does). Also, stashing could be automatic and rebase could also rebase descendant branches.
- zibzab 5y ago
  > and rebase could also rebase descendant branches. Why?? This sounds like something that could break tons of workflows
  - martinvonz 5y ago
    See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5600659/rebasing-a-branch-including-all-its-children https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5600659/rebasing-a-branc... and its many duplicates. I think that's what users typically want.

usr1106 5y ago

I fully agree. The challenge here might be if it's not a single user repo, how does the simple frontend deal with tricky cases introduced by other users?

oneepic 5y ago
It probably wouldn't deal with it "well enough". Although, any errors or validation failures would point the user to use git commands to restore peace and order before using the tool again.

martinvonz 5y ago

The CLI could be simpler without making it less powerful. For example, "the index" should not be visible to the user, IMO. The usecases it enables can be achieved with a simpler CLI (like Mercurial does). Also, stashing could be automatic and rebase could also rebase descendant branches.

zibzab 5y ago
> and rebase could also rebase descendant branches. Why?? This sounds like something that could break tons of workflows
- martinvonz 5y ago
  See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5600659/rebasing-a-branch-including-all-its-children https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5600659/rebasing-a-branc... and its many duplicates. I think that's what users typically want.