Re: VC mode and git

[chad]

On 01 Apr 2015, at 15:05, Alan Mackenzie <address@hidden> wrote:

It seems the real answer is "everybody" commits often, so it must
be good thing to do.  I've never found that sort of reasoning
persuasive.

Frequent commits allow people the freedom to move up, down, and

around the various versions of a dynamic codebase thats also being

worked on by many other people. The various tools for navigating

the DAG help quite a lot, but such things are generally too obscure

for new git users to grok, so they sit waiting for a future when

Im ready that sometimes never arrives. The practice also meshes

nicely with (both responding to and encouraging) a style of programming

that emphasizes and rewards frequent experiments and (especially

popular lately) test-driven exploration in actual code.

If you arent already used to working this way, then there is a hill

to climb before it becomes comfortable. This naturally implies a

tradeoff - some people will hate climbing the hill more, while

others will be excited to try something new with the hope of improving

their workflow, programming ability, etc. (As an aside: This last

group is, I claim, very important to Emacs, because its a major

source of new Emacs users - they grow up on simple editors and IDEs,

and then hear that theres rich rewards to be gained if only they

can manage to climb the cliffs of Emacs mastery.)

I dont want to put words into anyones mouth, but I think that there

are people on this list who are trying to help others *understand*

git that want to convey something like this idea:

There are solid advantages to this part of git’s typical

usage pattern that are considered features not bugs, and

will not be changed (by git) because of these advantages.

Whether those features are advantageous to any one person is a

tradeoff. The discussion continues (IMHO) because *some* of the

people who have made a *personal* choice are making claims about

*general* choices, and those claims directly contradict the choices

of many reasonable, knowledgable people.  It certainly doesnt help

that so many of these claims are *statements* that take the form “I 

don’t see why anyone would ever want FOO.”

I hope that helps,

~Chad