This article demonstrates some of Magit’s most essential features in order to give you an impression of how the interface works. It also hints at some of the design principals behind that interface.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Magit is a complete interface to Git, which does not limit itself to the “most essential features everyone needs”. I hope that this article succeeds in demonstrating how Magit’s focus on work-flows allows its users to become more effective Git users. Here we concentrate on some essential work-flows, but note that more advanced features and work-flows have been optimized with the same attention to detail.
If you would rather concentrate on the big picture, then read the article Magit the magical Git interface instead (or afterwards).
As a non-developer, I have no idea if this is a useful tool, but I do like the idea of it.
>> As a non-developer …
Maybe it is time for you to learn some programming. I find it odd that someone who is working as a translator (?), and reporting on low-level computer news, can’t program.
I believe it will be very rewarding for to you write, in any programming language, an expression parser for simple math expressions (numbers and +-*/) based on a BNF grammar.
Invincible Cow,
Even if Thom doesn’t want to program himself, it’d still be fun if he came up with some fun programming contests. I’ve mentioned the idea a few times. I don’t know if anyone would participate though.
Thom, you ever do any soldering? I recall you wanted to learn how.
dfgd
It took me ten minutes to figure out that this is an Emacs plug-in and thus useless to me. There’s nothing wrong with using Emacs or Emacs plug-ins, but it would be nice to mention that in the article so that those who don’t use Emacs don’t waste their time. (The URL is to a site called emacsair.me, but I didn’t notice that until after and URL’s are often misleading as to the content of the web site.) ((It’s quite possible that Thom didn’t realize this either, as the linked article doesn’t make it clear either.))
Agreed. Although it is technically possible to use Emacs just for Magit.
Ditto! Although you saved me 9:59 seconds…
Git is about 10 times more useful to a developer as are comments and edition history in word useful a translator who have to work in a team on draft version while its finalized.
Dev’s often work in independent features so git allows to have separate files and facilitates robust reconciliation.
Finally dev’s sometimes have to fix older versions of app and git also supports this “time travel” it just for developer but for changes as well