[Biopython-dev] Easy Git - git for mere mortals?

[Peter]

Hi all,

Have any of you tried out easygit (eg)?  If it is as good as it sounds
on their website, it might be a sensible option for those migrating
from CVS/SVN to git for the first time.
http://www.gnome.org/~newren/eg/

Reading the easygit documentation, it sounds like git gives the user
plenty of ways to shoot themselves in the foot (especially if used to
CVS/SVN), and a lot of what easygit does is catch some of these
potential mistakes.  They also stress you can mix and match git and
easy git, so it can act as a stepping stone to using git directly.

This presentation seems a fairly gentle introduction (with plenty of
for interest stuff in the second half that can be ignored),
http://www.gnome.org/~newren/eg/presentations/git-introduction.pdf

There are quite a few other wrappers for git too - all referred to as
"porcelain", which apparently follows from Linux's division of end
user commands in git into external "porcelain" and internal
"plumbing".  The "porcelain" are the bits of a bathroom the end user
sees (like the sink), while they normally only interact with the "ugly
plumbing" when something goes wrong (like dropping an ear ring down
the sink).  This kind of quirky language doesn't really make the
documentation any clearer in my opinion, still I'm sure things are
improving gradually (or at least, I hope they are).  For the moment
I've come to the conclusion the git man pages are not really suitable
for beginners.

Peter

P.S. For the moment, let's keep the wiki page focused on using git
itself directly - too many choices will confuse things.