On 2016-12-20 05:17 PM, Paul Mackerras wrote:
On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 10:01:15AM -0500, Marc Branchaud wrote:
On 2016-12-19 11:44 AM, Michael Haggerty wrote:
This patch series changes a bunch of details about how remote-tracking
references are rendered in the commit list of gitk:
Thanks for this! I like the new, compact look very much!
That said, I remember when I was a new git user and I leaned heavily on gitk
to understand how references worked. It was particularly illuminating to
see the remote references distinctly labeled, and the fact that they were
"remotes/origin/foo" gave me an Aha! moment where I came to understand that
the refs hierarchy is more flexible than just the conventions coded into git
itself. I eventually felt free to create my own, private ref hierarchies.
I am in no way opposed to this series. I just wanted to point out that
there was some utility in those labels. It makes me think that it might be
worthwhile for gitk to have a "raw-refs" mode, that shows the full
"refs/foo/bar/baz" paths of all the heads, tags, and whatever else. It
could be a useful teaching tool for git.
Do you think we should have a checkbox in the preferences dialog to
select whether to display the long form or the short form?
Mmmm, more knobs!
No, I don't think that's necessary. Such a setting would probably just
confuse people. Plus it's not something anyone is likely to want to
change anyway. Maybe if there were an "Advanced" tab in the settings
dialog, but even then it seems like overkill.
I suspect there are better ways to teach people about the refs hierarchy
than cluttering up gitk. These may even already exist -- I've been a
git user for 8 years now, so I'm sure my perspective of the learning
curve is skewed.
M.
