> I don't even think we need to query the user to fill out all of the > fields. We can prepopulate a lot of the fields (name, e-mail address, > etc.) from OS specific defaults that are available on most systems --- > specifically, the default values we would use the name and e-mail > address are not specified in a config file. Please don't. Or you end up again with Commiters like sb@localhost, sbeller@(None) or alike. I mean it's just one question once you setup a new computer, so I'd really like to see that question and then answer myself (at university/employer I might put in another email address than at home anyway, and I'm sure my boxes have no sane defaults) 2014-04-24 15:41 GMT+02:00 Theodore Ts'o <tytso@xxxxxxx>: > On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 03:23:54AM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote: >> >> There is evidence for the claim that there won't be those problems. You have >> absolutely no evidence there there will. > > Felipe, > > It's clear that you've not been able to produce evidence that can > convince most of the people on this thread. Simply repeating the same > assertions over and over again, in a shrill fashion, is not likely to > convince those of us who that this would not be a good idea for git > v2.0. > > Creating a ~/.gitconfig file if one doesn't already is one I agree > with, and at least on Unix systems, telling them that the config file > lives in ~/.gitconfig, or where ever it might happen to be on other > platforms, is a good one. If it's in some really weird place on > Windows, then sure, we can tell them about "git config -e". But the > point is to let the user look at the default .gitconfig file, where we > can put in comments to help explain what is going on, and perhaps have > links to web pages for more information. > > I don't even think we need to query the user to fill out all of the > fields. We can prepopulate a lot of the fields (name, e-mail address, > etc.) from OS specific defaults that are available on most systems --- > specifically, the default values we would use the name and e-mail > address are not specified in a config file. > > We can just tell the user that we have created a default .gitconfig > file, and tell them how they can take a look at it. > > In the long term, if the worry is how to bridge the gap between > complete newbies, one way of dealing with this is to have a tutorial > mode (off by default, on in the default .gitconfig) which despenses > some helpful hints at certain strategic points (i.e., after five > commits, give a message that introduces git log --oneline, after the > third merge commit is created by the user, give a message which > introduces git log --merge, and so on). The challenge is not strawing > over the line to the point where the hints become as annoying as > "clippy", but that is what UX labs are for, to tune the experience for > completely new users to git. > > Without doing a formal UX experiment, all of us are going to making > assertions without formal evidence --- at best some of us who have > tutored a few newbies might have some anecdates, but remember the old > saying about the plural of anecdote not being data. > > Cheers, > > - Ted > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in > the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html