Re: On the subject of Git, Bazaar, and the future of Emacs development

[Alan Mackenzie]

On Tue, Apr 02, 2013 at 04:16:19PM +0100, Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie <address@hidden> writes:
> > hg wins here hands down.  Given how many commands there are in git,
> > having to study multi-hundred line man pages here seems suboptimal.
> > Indeed, having to learn git could be a barrier to participation in
> > projects which use it.

> git is incredibly powerful.  This is reflected by the amount and length
> of the official documentation.

Indeed.  hg has about the same degree of power (reflected in the fact
that many large projects use it), yet its entire documentation is in a
single, easily searchable ~7000 line man page.

> There is no need to study all git-related man-pages.  When it comes to
> understanding and implementing a conservative workflow one just needs a
> handful of different commands with about one or two arguments each.

As a beginner, one must first work out what these commands are, then
continually look Somewhere Else to be reminded how to use them.  hg is
far superior here, in that its commands are fewer (and thus more
powerful) and its help command is actually helpful.

> I really like git's man pages.  In my opinion, the documentation is
> precise, meaningful and does not leave much room any questions.

man pages are suboptimal for beginners.  It's largely beginners who'll
want to type "git help ....".

> A lot of books have been written about git.  In particular, please check

>     http://git-scm.com/book

> This one is both tutorial and reference and has been translated to many
> languages.

I'll give it a look, sometime.

> I do not think it takes much time to master git.

Good!

>         Christopher

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).