From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Alan Mackenzie Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: On the popularity of git Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2015 21:48:27 +0000 Message-ID: <20151031214827.GB1853@acm.fritz.box> References: <20151028235340.GE2538@acm.fritz.box> <87ziz213wx.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <20151029123554.GB2510@acm.fritz.box> <87h9l995ec.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <20151029170237.GF2510@acm.fritz.box> <22068.12941.199944.979963@turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <20151031165007.GA20747@acm.fritz.box> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1446328034 9170 80.91.229.3 (31 Oct 2015 21:47:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2015 21:47:14 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Oct 31 22:47:06 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1ZsdzN-0005dx-7t for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 31 Oct 2015 22:47:05 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:57105 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZsdzM-0006mP-1V for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 31 Oct 2015 17:47:04 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:41647) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Zsdz6-0006jN-3z for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 31 Oct 2015 17:46:48 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Zsdz1-0001vi-4l for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 31 Oct 2015 17:46:48 -0400 Original-Received: from mail.muc.de ([193.149.48.3]:19907) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1Zsdz0-0001vJ-O4 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 31 Oct 2015 17:46:43 -0400 Original-Received: (qmail 72516 invoked by uid 3782); 31 Oct 2015 21:46:40 -0000 Original-Received: from acm.muc.de (p579E9C22.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [87.158.156.34]) by colin.muc.de (tmda-ofmipd) with ESMTP; Sat, 31 Oct 2015 22:46:39 +0100 Original-Received: (qmail 25651 invoked by uid 1000); 31 Oct 2015 21:48:27 -0000 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.23 (2014-03-12) X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.1.12 (Macallan) X-Primary-Address: acm@muc.de X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: FreeBSD 9.x X-Received-From: 193.149.48.3 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:193036 Archived-At: Hello, Steinar. On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 10:08:13PM +0100, Steinar Bang wrote: > >>>>> Alan Mackenzie : > > Not at all. There are 20, 30, or 50 options which all consciously > > have to be omitted. Otherwise you are stumbling in the dark, or > > merely learning sequences of commands by rote (as I have done), rather > > than truly mastering them. > Could you concretely name some of these 20 to 50 options? Yes, I could, but it would be far less work for anybody interested simply to look at a typical git man page. For example, git-commit has 38 options, and that's not counting long and short forms of the same option as being different. (For comparison, hg commit has 12 options, whose descriptions are so succinct (between three and eleven words each), that they can be scanned in a matter of a few seconds.) > If you have to omit them all the time, it shouldn't be too much work. The work involved is in checking through all these options to discover which ones aren't needed. Given that the man pages aren't well written, this can be a long, tedious process. I suspect most people just ignore most of the options, cross their fingers, and hope. -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).