Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 03/15] user-manual: Use 'remote add' to setup push URLs

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2013 14:45:59 -0800

"W. Trevor King" <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 01:33:31PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Look at how "Fetching branches from other repositories" is done.  It
>> shows the use of "remote add" and then shows the result by running
>> "cat" to show the contents.
>> 
>> I think that organization is much nicer than completely hiding how
>> the result looks like behind another "git config --set" call, like
>> the latter half of this patch does.
>
> I think for new users, `git config …`'s opacity may a good thing

No.  Reducing the fear factor from new users by not hiding simple
things is one of the design of these tutorials, and showing that the
contents of .git/config is a simple, human-readable plain text file
is a part of it.

> I'm fine with this too, but if this is the suggested route, why bother
> with `git config` at all?  Is it just for ease of scripting?

I would actually say why bother with `git remote` at all, when you
can do that with `git config`, but arguably when a Porcelain that is
type-specific exists, use of it would make the life of end users
easier, and that is why we ended up having `git remote add`.  So if
you know how the remote configuration is implemented, you can still
use `config` to do the same, but `remote add` that futzes with many
variables at once would be easier to use for most people.