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Git has a lot of UI problems. This is not really surprising. It's gotten a lot better, but I do think that no matter how proud Torvalds is of the fact that he n

Git has a lot of UI problems. This is not really surprising. It's gotten a lot better, but I do think that no matter how proud Torvalds is of the fact that he never looked at another version control system for inspiration, a lot of pain could have been avoided if he had (even while still going in the different directions he did). Not all of us had the 'luxury' of never working with version control before. But don't get me wrong. On the whole, git is fantastic and a real improvement on its predecessors.

sjwright 14y ago
Git is a brilliant piece of technology engineering, with an embarrassingly half-baked user interaction model. If I could change one thing, it would be pushing and pulling between workstations and central repositories. Distributed is nice, but at the end of the day you still want your code to end up somewhere, and Git doesn't make that process feel smooth or robust.
glurgh 14y ago
>no matter how proud Torvalds is of the fact that he >never looked at another version control system for >inspiration What gave you that impression? Git was strongly influenced by BitKeeper and to a much lesser extent by Monotone. And, arguably, 'anti-inspired' by several other VCS's Linus would have surely been at least passingly familiar with.
- stormbrew 14y ago
  There's a rather famous video of him talking about how wonderful his lack of experience with traditional VCS' was for producing git. Obviously he had used bitkeeper (but wasn't very fond of it), and he was probably exaggerating a bit even after that. I think most of the outside influence came from people who weren't Torvalds, but the command set is just so weirdly different from every other VCS (even where functionality maps nearly 1:1) that it seems likely that it was designed without much consideration for existing use patterns of other VCS'.
  - glurgh 14y ago
    I haven't seen the video but generally he's been very complimentary of BK: http://marc.info/?l=git&m=114685143200012 http://marc.info/?l=git&m=114685143200012 http://marc.info/?l=git&m=116129092117475 http://marc.info/?l=git&m=116129092117475 And two basic verbs 'pull' and 'push' are straight from BK. My impression's been that the crazy command set is in part due to the early design idea that the basic commands represent primitives that operate on the fundamental git model on top of which something, potentially separate and more human-friendly will be built. Except it didn't quite work out that way.

sjwright 14y ago

Git is a brilliant piece of technology engineering, with an embarrassingly half-baked user interaction model. If I could change one thing, it would be pushing and pulling between workstations and central repositories. Distributed is nice, but at the end of the day you still want your code to end up somewhere, and Git doesn't make that process feel smooth or robust.

glurgh 14y ago

>no matter how proud Torvalds is of the fact that he >never looked at another version control system for >inspiration What gave you that impression? Git was strongly influenced by BitKeeper and to a much lesser extent by Monotone. And, arguably, 'anti-inspired' by several other VCS's Linus would have surely been at least passingly familiar with.

stormbrew 14y ago
There's a rather famous video of him talking about how wonderful his lack of experience with traditional VCS' was for producing git. Obviously he had used bitkeeper (but wasn't very fond of it), and he was probably exaggerating a bit even after that. I think most of the outside influence came from people who weren't Torvalds, but the command set is just so weirdly different from every other VCS (even where functionality maps nearly 1:1) that it seems likely that it was designed without much consideration for existing use patterns of other VCS'.
- glurgh 14y ago
  I haven't seen the video but generally he's been very complimentary of BK: http://marc.info/?l=git&m=114685143200012 http://marc.info/?l=git&m=114685143200012 http://marc.info/?l=git&m=116129092117475 http://marc.info/?l=git&m=116129092117475 And two basic verbs 'pull' and 'push' are straight from BK. My impression's been that the crazy command set is in part due to the early design idea that the basic commands represent primitives that operate on the fundamental git model on top of which something, potentially separate and more human-friendly will be built. Except it didn't quite work out that way.