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> Git continues to surprise me with its code wrangling abilities. That's not a good thing. Perhaps it's not that people are "tripped up" by thinking in terms o

> Git continues to surprise me with its code wrangling abilities. That's not a good thing. Perhaps it's not that people are "tripped up" by thinking in terms of SVN, but rather, are frustrated that things that should be simple aren't. Instead, you want them to adopt an anything-goes git model where nearly everything is mutable, no data is sacred, branches and tags can be dropped at will and be gone from the repo refs, and people run around rewriting history willy nilly because they can. Meanwhile, the poor SVN user wonders why they couldn't just commit, update, and get back to coding already.

matwood 13y ago
Actually it is a great thing. I'm not even sure SVN could do what I often have to do. I have 2 large projects that diverged into different projects awhile back. They each share some code and often bugs need to be fixed in both. With git I can add each project as a remote to the other and cherry pick commits back and forth to keep both projects up to date without much fuss. Thinking about what should be simple and isn't is branching in SVN. Most people know very little about branching because SVN makes it so hard to use. I would argue that people switching to git are not having a hard time with git so much as they are finally learning proper source control techniques in addition to git. The basics in git are simple though. If a person is just replicating SVN, git adds 2 more steps (stage and push). Like I mentioned above though, people are not just learning git, they are also finally learning proper SCM.
click170 13y ago
You have a point regarding things that should be simple, not being simple. I'll agree that can be a problem. What I don't agree with is the idea that you have to use all the advanced features. Your last line hits on the idea that SVN users can't just commit, update, and get back to coding. Can't they? Can they not simply ignore everything extra until they hit a problem that the tools they've decided to use can't solve on their own? Branching, bisecting, rebasing et al are not required in a git-centered workflow, they just make it easier to do Black Magic (tm).

matwood 13y ago

Actually it is a great thing. I'm not even sure SVN could do what I often have to do. I have 2 large projects that diverged into different projects awhile back. They each share some code and often bugs need to be fixed in both. With git I can add each project as a remote to the other and cherry pick commits back and forth to keep both projects up to date without much fuss. Thinking about what should be simple and isn't is branching in SVN. Most people know very little about branching because SVN makes it so hard to use. I would argue that people switching to git are not having a hard time with git so much as they are finally learning proper source control techniques in addition to git. The basics in git are simple though. If a person is just replicating SVN, git adds 2 more steps (stage and push). Like I mentioned above though, people are not just learning git, they are also finally learning proper SCM.

click170 13y ago

You have a point regarding things that should be simple, not being simple. I'll agree that can be a problem. What I don't agree with is the idea that you have to use all the advanced features. Your last line hits on the idea that SVN users can't just commit, update, and get back to coding. Can't they? Can they not simply ignore everything extra until they hit a problem that the tools they've decided to use can't solve on their own? Branching, bisecting, rebasing et al are not required in a git-centered workflow, they just make it easier to do Black Magic (tm).