Re: the "r" in "git pull -r"

[Graham Percival]

On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 08:45:22AM +0100, Trevor Daniels wrote:
>
> Graham Percival wrote Monday, August 10, 2009 12:48 AM
>> I maoing hate git.
>
> Git is fine; the complexity comes from the
> baroque structures in LilyPond.  Let's be
> thankful Git has tools to cope :)

Oh?  Didn't you comment that if you had to use git at the
beginning, you wouldn't have ever started contributing?  Remember
Tim's first reaction when he saw the instructions for starting to
help the website -- "criminity on a crutch":
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2009-07/msg00288.html

We've lost 50% of potential contributors to the website because of
git.  Now, it's an open question whether those potentials were
actually serious or not.  However, I know that it took one serious
contributor almost a week to reach the state of being able to send
me good updates.  Even disregarding the offers of help that dried
up when git was mentioned, I do *not* think that spending a week
fighting git is very motivating.

My vitriolic hatred of git isn't for my own sake -- I can bludgeon
it into doing whatever I need.  If necessary, I'll break down and
read the manual.  And I'm not going to leave lilypond because of
git.  But as the person most involved with new contributors --
both GDP and trying to encourage others to work on the website --
I see helpful people disappearing after I point them at the git
instructions time and time again.  Granted, some people's good
intentions only last as far sending emails... but I'm sure that
*some* of them would have become actual contributors if the
initial burden were lessened.

Wouldn't another 3 or 4 people working on the docs be nice?


I don't care if "git log" or merging patches from one branch to
another is complicated.  But simple things like "get source,
update source, upload my changes" should be simple.  svn does this
quite well.  I've heard nice things about bazaar.  But git?
Apparently "git pull -r" is the best way to update... in /most/
cases... but lilypond-devel only discovered this a few years ago.
And we have at least one git developer on this list!

That's why I want the CG to have the **minimum** required to do
those simple things in git.  Pretend that you've just discovered a
few typos in the docs.  Being a helpful person, you want to fix
them, and you know that a patch is the easiest thing for us to
work with.  How much git should you suffer through in order to
create that patch?
IMO, the minimum is:
- download and install git.
- download source code.  (copy&paste from CG 1.1.1)
- update source code.  (copy&paste from CG 1.2.2)
- spend time editing the files.  (this is what we want
  contributors to spend time doing!)
- send us their changes.  (copy&paste from CG 1.3.1)

We want people working on lilypond, not working at understanding
git.

Cheers,
- Graham