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Comment by rcknight | Hacker News Reader

I like the idea of this, would be good to wean a few people off the github client onto the command line.

I can understand that this wants to create a real repository on my github, but it is asking permission to read/write to private repos, so I stopped at that point.

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That's certainly a legitimate concern, but keep in mind that it's hosted on and sponsored by Github, who already have access to your private repos.

Why would people need to be "weaned" off of a graphical client towards a command line? Is it a specific client or all of them?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your sentiment - are you one of those people who thinks that all GUIs are for children and that command lines are for adults or something along that line?

I think it's a case of leaky abstractions: git is sufficiently complicated that no-one (to my knowledge) has abstracted away the original CLI into a GUI that works for everything one would want/need to do with git.

Sure, but they do like 99% of what everybody working with git does every day.

So, do we still need to be "weaned" or can we just add some features to the GUI clients if and when necessary?

Maybe I understand your sentiment - are you one of those children who thinks his/her toy hammer can build ocean liners?

:wink:

You're comparing graphical git clients to toy hammers? Really?

That's awfully interesting. Please, tell us more about that analogy.

Because graphical clients tend to cause problems when interacting with other people (no shared lingo, using features that aren't implemented in the client, etc), and because Git GUIs in particular tend to be very anaemic compared to the CLI. In particular, I have yet to see a GUI give you access to the reflog so you can undo many kinds of destructive changes, which seems like it would be a useful thing to have for people who don't really understand the system they're using.

Do you have some evidence for your claim that graphical clients tend to cause problems when interacting with other people?

Does one missing feature really make them anaemic?

I understand the git system just fine, I've worked with many other developers who use a disparate set of git tools and I've seen no such problem. I rarely touch the command line and it's just amazing - it's like I have this brain that can understand a system without using the same exact tool that you use to work with it.

Really, I just love the elitist remarks from people who love the command line.

Sure. Few clients (any?) support rebasing or squashed merge commits. So if you work with people who like a simple single-commit-per-feature workflow on the master branch, you're left learning the CLI. Also, "shared lingo": cryptic error messages have been stated elsewhere on this post, and there's no reliable way to tell people how to resolve them (if it's even possible in the GUI they're using).

And stop being an ass by assuming I'm being an ass, please.

TortoiseGit supports them both. Even if none of them did...anemic? Really? I didn't think I was assuming; it was fairly self evident to me, based on the amount of hyperbole being too damn high.

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