[Beowulf] Thoughts on git?

[Adam DeConinck]

I am also a fan of putting everything in source control. This is useful for
small scripts, but even more so (IMO) for configuration files. Being able
to track changes closely is a lifesaver when something about a system stops
working, and you have no idea what has changed. Source control has saved me
from the “this change is harmless!” problem many times.

As for git itself... I’m kind of meh. I do use it.  The distributed model
is great, and you have the advantage of the popular tool having a lot of
debugging resources. But the CLI  can be confusing, especially if you don’t
use it often, and I think the official documentation is not great. So I
think choosing some other system (Mercurial, Bazaar, Subversion) is
perfectly defensible if it works better for you. At the
small-scripts-and-config level, I think the biggest win is in using source
control at all.

On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 08:41 Brian Oborn <linuxpunk at gmail.com> wrote:

> I argue that using a source control system of any kind is useful for
> answering the questions like "This was working 6 months ago. What have I
> changed since then?" or "This line of code to work around feature X is odd.
> When did I change it and what was my motivation at the time?"
>
> Git has the advantage that it doesn't require a server to track the
> commits for a single person so you could just use it on a local filesystem
> with normal file-level backups. That would reduce the complexity quite a
> bit.
>
> Brian Oborn
>
> On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 10:11 AM, Faraz Hussain <info at feacluster.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I am curious what people think of git. On one hand everyone seems to be
>> using it and proclaiming its virtues. On the other hand it seems way
>> overkill for how the majority of people code.
>>
>> I maintain dozens of scripts to manage various HPC environments . None
>> are more than a few hundred lines long. To do backups of scripts, I just
>> copy them to some backup folder. Occasionally I might tar them up and copy
>> them to a different server. I have never had a need to go back to an older
>> version of my script.
>>
>> So I tried to learn git but find it very confusing. It seems designed for
>> teams of developers working on some million+ line of code project. For my
>> rinky-dinky scripts it just adds a lot of confusion. It seems I need to
>> "commit" to using git everyday in order for it to be effective. Otherwise,
>> use it or lose it.
>>
>> Should I force myself to use git everyday? Or maybe find some
>> incrementally better way to manage backups of my scripts?
>>
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