Re: CG chapter 2, first draft

[Trevor Daniels]

Mark Polesky wrote Tuesday, January 12, 2010 4:03 AM


> Graham Percival wrote:
>
> > I think a fair chunk of it will be wasted effort, but it's
> > *your* effort to waste.
>
> Geez, Graham, sometimes I wish you *would* mince a few words
> from time to time!  I don't think it's a waste at all.  I
> remember wasting so much time just trying to figure out how
> to exit the commit message without killing the whole shell:
>
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2009-05/msg00365.html
>
> And then half a year later, Trevor D. went through the exact same
> thing:
>
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2009-12/msg00011.html
>
> *That's* where the waste is.  The intent of my revisions is
> to prevent these stupid traps for the next generation of
> contributors.  Get them up and running as painlessly as
> possible.

Exactly my opinion too ...

> > That said, a few more comments: - if you're going to go to
> > all this effort, please eliminate the "git on windows"
> > section -- for each portion of the (unix-aimed) docs, just
> > dump the relevant windows instructions on the bottom of
> > the page.
>
> I'm considering it.  This is still a work-in-progress.

... and that's why this section on git gui and gitk are
important.  They make using git virtually pain-free.

> > ..."here's how to paste to a git bash window" (I don't
> > remember if _that_ was hard, but cutting&pasting to/from a
> > cygwin window is a nightmare!)
>
> Now that I'm back home I don't have access to a Schmindows
> machine, so I forget the details.  But I do remember it
> being a pain.  Something like
>
> 1) Right-click on the title-bar of the Git Bash window
> 2) Select Edit > Mark
> 3) Left-click and drag your selection.
> 4) Press enter to copy it to the clipboard.
>
> Ugh.  Something terrible like that.  Trevor, if you have
> some time, could you write a line or two about this sort of
> thing?

I've never had to to do it, as I rarely use
the git bash command line for git work.  I
can do virtually everything in git gui or
gitk, which cut and paste normally in both
Windows and Unix.  But I've just tried your
instructions and they work fine cutting from
the git bash shell to a Windows app.  In the
reverse direction you need to right click on
the title-bar and select Edit > Paste.  I don't
use Cygwin, so I don't know if it shares a
clipboard with Windows.

> Also, Trevor: changing the editor on Windows with
> `git config', ie. without troubling with environment
> variables---is it as simple as doing this?
>
> git config --global core.editor wordpad

I never did it - with git gui you never need an
editor.  It has a pane specifically for displaying,
entering and editing commit messages.  It also has
an "Amend Last Commit" button which was the only
form of rebase -i I ever needed.  The old commit
message then reappears in the Commit Message pane.
And I only needed an editor in ubuntu until I
discovered git gui was also available as a unix app.

> > Oh, maybe a note explaining the directory/ vs. directory\
>
> I seem to recall Git bash fixed those automatically.  Don't
> remember.  Trevor?

I've always used / in git bash.  No problem.  I just
tried \ in git bash and it fails.  It seems to treat
it as a null.

> p.s. are files that start with a period hidden on Windows
> like they are on Unix?

No

Trevor