Subject: Re: Git User's Survey 2007 unfinished summary continued

From: Andreas Ericsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 10:03:33 +0200

Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
> 
> "Find out why people find git hard to learn and eliminate those barriers
> to entry" is what we do with usability tests e.g. in GNOME.

And what every major corporation who's serious about UI's do. Windows
works the way it does because that's how idiots expect it to work. Sad but
true. If our aim is world domination, we need not cater to the morons, but
we must make it easier for them to start learning on their own.

>  You ask
> people to use your software to accomplish well-defined tasks ("send a
> mail to [email-masked]", "using the word processor, copy this fancy printed
> layout").  Then, you see how they *expect* your software to work, you
> see in which places it doesn't behave like that, and you fix it.  This
> produces very good results.  For Git in particular this could be things
> like, "Import this project from SVN, fix a bug, commit the patch", or
> "You are a maintainer, merge in these two branches from two
> contributors".
> 

I like it. So much so that I'll see if I can get a non-programmer at work
to do these tasks. Now... to assemble that task-list. Suggestions welcome.

> 
> It's hard to know where to begin :)  Do I need "git-cherry-pick" or
> "git-cherry"?  Why is the "apply a patch" command called "git-am"?  Why
> is it different from "git-apply"?  From "git-applypatch"?  Etc.
> 

I agree completely. It wouldn't be hard to make git-apply figure out if
it's being fed something that 'am' would normally want, and if it's being
fed it inside a git repo. If so, make it work just like 'am'.
git-applypatch was deprecated a long time ago and has already been removed.

Personally, I can't help but think that the numerous times I've heard "oh
gods, that's a lot of commands" should finally mean something. I've started
taking a look at which of them one can bundle together. If we can drop the
porcelainish commands down to ~30 or so, and hide the plumbing from git-<tab>
listings, the initial hurdle people have to jump would be significantly lower.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   [email-masked]
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231