Subject: Re: Simple commit mechanism for non-technical users

From: Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 01:10:03 -0700 (PDT)

D Sundstrom <[email-masked]> writes:

> I use git to manage all project artifacts, including documentation,
> proposals, presentations, and so on.
> 
> However, I have a hard time convincing non-technical staff to learn
> enough about git or to take the time to go through the effort of
> committing changes to a repository.  So the steady stream of email
> attachments with "Acme Specification v3" or "final final spemco
> proprosal" continues.
> 
> I'd hoped there was a simple web interface that would allow a user to
> upload and commit a file to a repository, but I've had no luck finding
> one.  (I've used cgit for browsing, but it is read-only).

Some of git web interfaces or git hosting software offer editing via
web interface.  Neither gitweb nor cgit offers this; it is available
AFAIK in GitHub (but it is not open source, and server version GitHub:FI
isn't cheap).

You can use some wiki (there are some wikis with git backend,
e.g. ikiwiki, see http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/InterfacesFrontendsAndTools)
or CMS like Drupal instead.  Note that wikis usually work in 
lock-edit-unlock mode (no merging changes), and have per page (per file)
versioning.

Alternate solution would be to use one of GUIs for Git, like
e.g. git-gui or QGit, or filemanager integration / shell extension
like (for MS Windows) TortoiseGit or Git Extensions.

> Is anyone aware of a simple way I can have my non-technical users
> manage their documents against a git repository?  Ideally this would
> involve no installation of software on their machine (unless it were
> compelling, for example, the Finder plugin for SVN on the mac was a
> great tool for these users; or at least those on a mac...)

What operating system?  What do you use currently?

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git