I have been somewhat disturbed and confused by the fact that the line between what Porcelain like Cogito does and what we ship as part of "core GIT" is getting more and more blurred. This was especially so while I was working on the $GIT_DIR/branches/ patch.
This trend started when "git diff", "git commit" and friends were added for the sake of usability of the bare Plumbing. These basic commands are must and I do not have any objection to have them in the "core GIT" suite, but at the same time I think the core should not be competing with Porcelains, and feel that a line should be drawn somewhere [*1*]. I'd like to hear opinions from the list. Personally I think what we have so far is about right, relative to what the current crop of Porcelains offer. This is me speaking as just "an individual developer". Linus as "the project lead", Pasky as the maintainer of the de-facto standard Porcelain, and others on the list may have different opinions. I do not think the core GIT should be making drastic innovations that Porcelain folks have not asked. In my ideal world, Porcelains would be the first to innovate in the UI and use pattern area, and while doing so, would discover something lacking from the core. The purpose of the core GIT development should primarily be to fill these needs. Then, once "best current practices" from Porcelains emerge, the infrastructure to support them would become a part of core GIT; we might even start shipping corresponding barebone Porcelain scripts to codify that BCP using the same support infrastructure as part of the "core GIT" suite [*2*]. Linus said that the current Plumbing already does all he wants it to do. I started sharing the same opinion. I am finding myself using my own Porcelain commands less frequently for doing basic things, because the barebone Porcelain already fills much of my needs. [Footnotes] *1* Yes, I publicly stated that one of my goals of my involvement in GIT development was to make choice of Porcelain more or less irrelevant, and that still stands, which means that I am in favor of having rich enough barebone Porcelain shipped with "core GIT". But the problem I am having is now is how rich is rich enough. *2* ... and that is how we make the Porcelain less relevant ;-). - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
