I’m far from being a guru, but I consider myself a competent Git user.
Yet, here’s my understanding of the output of one the most-used
commands, `git push`:
Counting objects: 6, done.
No idea what an “object” is. Apparently there’s 6 of them here.
What does “counting” them means? Should I care?
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
No idea what is “delta compression”, I suppose something is being
compressed. It’s using anything between 1 and 4 threads, which is not
a very precise or useful information. Should I care?
Compressing objects: 100% (6/6), done.
I still don’t know what objects are, but I appreciate having feedback
on progress
Writing objects: 100% (6/6), 656 bytes | 656.00 KiB/s, done.
Writing what, where? Should I care? Still good to have feedback
Total 6 (delta 4), reused 0 (delta 0)
No idea what any of those numbers mean. Should I care?
remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (4/4), completed with 4 local objects.
I do know what’s a remote, but I don’t know what “resolving
deltas” means. There’s local objects now? I don’t understand what
happened to those local objects, are they the byproduct of the delta
resolving or the input or something else? Should I care?
To github.com:williamdclt/some-repo.git
Fair enough
1ca9aaa..4320d30 master -> master
Fair enough
All in all, I didn’t understand most of what I’ve been told, and
don’t seem to care about it. Don’t take my sassiness for disrespect,
I really appreciate (and am impressed by) everything that happens here,
but I feel like a less confusing UI is such a low-hanging fruit. How
many devs understand what all of this means, 1%-2% if even that? And
even them, do they need this info every time they push?
I feel like a less intimidating output would help, while showing info
about objects and deltas with the verbose flag:
Compressing… done
Pushing to github.com:williamdclt/some-repo.git… done
1ca9aaa..4320d30 master -> master
I’d be more than happy to work on this (`git push` is an example
amongst so many other), but want the mailing list’s opinion on it. Am
I wrong in thinking that this output is not something users want, am I
fighting windmills or maybe just being ignorant?
