[IPython-dev] Gitwash: a git/github workflow document for review

[Fernando Perez]

Hi,

On Sun, Apr 25, 2010 at 11:58 PM, Gael Varoquaux
<gael.varoquaux at normalesup.org> wrote:
>
> Most people around me don't, with bzr. It may be a bad thing :)

Well, actually with git you can also avoid it altogether: I moved my
git config files out of the way:

amirbar[~]> mv .gitconfig .gitignore .gitk tmp/

and then made a toy repo:

amirbar[~]> mkdir ff
amirbar[~]> cd ff
amirbar[ff]> git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/fperez/ff/.git/
(master)amirbar[ff]> echo hi > readme
(master)amirbar[ff]> git add .
(master)amirbar[ff]> git commit -m"Initial commit"
[master (root-commit) 317d06f] Initial commit
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 readme
(master)amirbar[ff]> git log
commit 317d06f03309b57a1978330c5f0520b84af57fe5
Author: Fernando Perez <fperez at amirbar.(none)>
Date:   Mon Apr 26 00:09:25 2010 -0700

    Initial commit
(master)amirbar[ff]>

It works fine, git will try to get some identity from your username
for the commits.  So in that regard it's identical to bzr: you can use
it with *zero* config, but you'll be happier with a minimal amount of
it in the long run.

>> We gave both the config file and the copy-paste at the command-line
>> commands, do you think the command-line version is friendlier?  Matthew
>> had that first and I thought the file one would be easier.
>
> It depends who you target audience is. A lot a people around me are going
> to try and edit these files with word :), so maybe the command line is
> better. But if you target developers, it's fine the way it is.

Well, our audience is anyone who can be expected to use nipy or
ipython from source. And we hope that any such person will become at
some point a contributor, so we want that transition to be as easy and
painless as possible.

>> Remember that with bzr you have the same thing, as the 'bazaar in five
>> minutes' http://doc.bazaar.canonical.com/latest/en/mini-tutorial/ doc
>> says:
>
> That tutorial is pretty good, I find.
>
> Once again, it depends who your target audience is. Some words in the
> gitwash document may be confusing for non-developers: I have found that
> people can be confused by the word 'source' (notice how the bzr tutorial
> avoids the problem using 'file'). On the other hand, the bzr tutorial
> uses words like 'upstream', which might not be understood either.

I actually agree, I hadn't really looked at that tutorial very much,
but I now like it a lot.  I think the gitwash doc could be
restructured in a single page very much following the model of that
bzr doc.

> That said, I feel that anybody who is somewhat a developer should be able
> to understand and use the gitwash document. Extending to non-developers
> requires more lengthy phrasing, and more definition of terms
> (repository), but I am not sure this is what you are aiming for.

We'll iterate on it with this feedback, thanks a lot for providing it.

Cheers,

f