Subject: Re: Command-line interface thoughts

From: Michael J Gruber <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2011 16:16:39 +0200

Junio C Hamano venit, vidit, dixit 06.06.2011 16:00:
> Michael J Gruber <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
>> Junio C Hamano venit, vidit, dixit 06.06.2011 08:16:
>> ...
>>> For example, how would you design the user experience of "git show NEXT"?
>>> Try to write a transcript (i.e. "The user starts from this state, runs
>>> these commands, and then says 'git show NEXT'. The user will see this."),
>>> covering various corner cases exhaustively, including what would happen
>>> before the first commit, and during a conflicted "pull" or "rebase -i".
>>>  ...
>> That is why the other Michael suggested "NEXT" as opposed to "INDEX":
> 
> That is why I asked what the user experience of "git show NEXT" as opposed
> to "git show INDEX" should look like. So what should it look like during a
> "pull" that did not finish?

If NEXT is to mean the result of a commit in the current state, and the
current state would or should not allow a commit, then trying to access
that pseudo-commit should error out with a helpful message.

Another option is to make NEXT/INDEX mean a tree (:0:). I have not
thought this through (and have not made a suggestion, accordingly) but I
do see a problem in the UI. (I don't think we need to change the
existing ui in that respect but can amend and improve it.)

Anyway, it's rc phase :)

Michael