Re: VC mode and git

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Harald Hanche-Olsen writes:
 > Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

 > > Richard's repo is tangled *because* he, like you, doesn't commit until
 > > he's ready to push.
 > 
 > That's overstating it;

OK, I'll concede that it's overstatement to say that it has been
proven to be the reason they have trouble.

Still, it's a plausible line of argument to say that the longer the
time between pulls, the more likely that a pull will cause a conflict
*and* touch a lot of files.  The number of files touched will only be
visible to the user when there is a conflict, otherwise the merge is
silent (unless the user directly investigates).  In Richard's case, he
testifies to weeks between pulls.  I don't know how long Alan goes
between pulls (where "how long" should be measured in number of
others' commits or maybe number of files touched), but he's probably
not close to Richard.  So I admit this is hardly well-calibrated.

 > but Eli says he *should* pull before committing, so that can't be
 > the reason.

Eli says it's OK to do so; AFAIK Eli is basically neutral towards
others' preferred workflows.  But I don't think Eli has a theory of
git that says it's OK, just his own experience.  But I rather doubt
Eli goes more than a couple days between pulls, so he would be
unlikely to see startling numbers of files touched, whereas Richard is
likely to run into that if he does have conflict.