[petsc-dev] Usability

[Jed Brown]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 5:51 PM, Matthew Knepley <knepley at gmail.com> wrote:

> Read the bottom of this page Jed sent:
>
>   http://gitolite.com/gcs/
>
> This detached HEAD business is something that makes Git less usable.
> It is very flexible, but this is easy to screw up. If we are branching
> around this is going to screw up right away.
>

master ~/petsc$ git checkout b95f98c
Note: checking out 'b95f98c'.

You are in 'detached HEAD' state. You can look around, make experimental
changes and commit them, and you can discard any commits you make in this
state without impacting any branches by performing another checkout.

If you want to create a new branch to retain commits you create, you may
do so (now or later) by using -b with the checkout command again. Example:

  git checkout -b new_branch_name

HEAD is now at b95f98c... Merge subtree 'buildsystem/master'
(b95f98c...) ~/petsc$ git branch
* (no branch)
  maint
  maint-3.2
  master
  next


So, on this page that Karl is writing, we don't just need instructions for
> doing things correctly. We need a bunch of diagnostic commands that
> will tell you what is happening and tell you what is screwed up.
>

Sure, and we can add to it as we learn more ways that people can get lost.
Using __git_ps1 helps a lot.
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