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Comment by litewulf | Hacker News Reader

One of the most frustrating things about git (as someone who occasionally uses git, mercurial and svn) is that the title here is "20 commands".

For svn my workflow is (checkout once), update, commit. Whereas I feel I'm mucking about in man and googling substantially more in order to do things in git.

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For that sort of work, you get exactly 4 commands to replace svn's 3 commands:

  git-clone
  git-commit -a
  git-push
  git-pull --rebase

With git, though, you tend to use it's advanced features a whole lot more. Why? I guess it's partly a cultural thing, partly a "holy crap things happen instantly" thing. It no longer hurts to use advanced features like branching, so you use them.

I agree, I don't use THAT many git commands, but I do have to look up more command line options to be sure I'm not going to blow my own foot off.

I agree, its probably cultural from looking over the shoulder at my git-loving-friends.

You've never used svn to create branches, merge, revert back an accidentally modified file, look at the log or run svn blame on a file?

If all you use svn for is commiting changes you might as well use periodic tar snapshots, then your workflow would be completely eliminated.

i use svn, but i have never created a branch or performed a merge. i do occasionally revert back to older versions of files, and i look at the commit log a lot. svn diffs are always informative. but even if i didn't do all that stuff, svn would beat periodic tarballs. it's a great way to collaborate with others, for example.

I want to clarify, the commands I use daily in svn number at two: update, and commit. I actually use IDE integration for most of the adding/deleting/copying, though I use the command line for that in svn and git when it suits me.

The "problem" with git is that there are commands like git-branch which I use infrequently... so I can never quite remember how it works. (Just like revert.)

This isn't really an attack on git, its perfect when I use it daily, but the moment I stop, I have a week of floundering about idiotically while CVS/SVN/etc feel substantially more simple. (Perforce as well, but to a lesser extent)

git is certainly full of interesting commands, and I'm still learning about some of them after 6 months. When unclear about a command try using

  git --help commandname

I highly recommend getting used to some of the "advanced" commands in git, once you learn to master them they become powerful tools.

Right. And thats my problem. "I'm still learning about some of them after 6 months".

Its tiring to have to type git --help, or man git-blah or whatever. Is it cool because I realize I have INFINITE POWER WAHAHA? Yah. But I have to look it up too :(

This simple workflow is actually not that much more complicated with git: clone once, update, commit, push.

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