Subject: Re: [kernel.org users] [RFD] On deprecating "git-foo" for builtins

From: Russell King <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:52:33 +0100

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 06:17:05PM -0600, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 01:39:30PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> > When I hear something like what David Woodhouse said in this thread, I
> > should be feeling "People -- those of you who claimed to be the silent
> > majority -- see, I told you so!  This is a very bad move".
> > 
> > But I can't.  People who complain _now_ just annoy me even more.  Why
> > weren't you defending the backward compatibility with me, which you seem
> > to value it so much, perhaps even more than I did back then?  Why are you
> > wasting our time bringing it up again, instead of joining the discussion
> > when it _mattered_ back then?
> 
> We didn't know the conversation was going on.  Why should we?  We only
> use the tool, not develop it.  I'm also not on the mailing lists for
> mutt, vim, gcc, binutils, openssh, grep, xchat, mozilla, gnome, xpdf or
> any of the dozens of other programs I use on a daily basis.

Well said Matthew, as a git _user_ I completely agree.

I only found out myself when it got installed on master.kernel.org, and
things that had worked fine for ages suddenly stopped working with no
clear solution.  Useless documentation which refers to the commands
which didn't seem to be in existence anymore was just, to put it mildly,
infuriating, and provided no answer.

That said, I've now updated all my scripts to not use the dashed version,
including on my local machines (which are still using git 1.5.4.x); the
only thing is I can't get out of the habbit of typing 'git-diff-tree -u'
if I want to see a single commit, or 'git-diff-files -u' if I want to
see (almost) everything in my working directory, or 'git-am'.  The
solution is trivial for when the dashed commands finally go away.

alias git-am='git am'
alias git-diff-files='git diff-files'

etc. in ~/.bashrc  So it's no real big hastle for me anymore.

-- 
Russell King