That has the same energy as complaining that a file manager has "Delete" in the context menu.
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I always found Git GUIs, especially the ones built into IDEs, to be more confusing and clunkier than working with Git on a terminal. It often feels like unlearning what one knows about Git, and relearning it the way that specific GUI demands.
Heck, I am going through the aforementioned feeling as I force myself to use Magit on Emacs. It just does not feel intuitive. But I will not give up until I have made an honest and full attempt.
The only sensible Git GUI I ever used is Sublime Merge[0], after a coworker praised it immensely. Even that is reserved for the rarest of the rare times when the changes in the workspace gets unwieldy and unruly. For every other instance: Git CLI on a terminal.
[0] https://www.sublimemerge.com/
E: typo, and link to mentioned GUI.
If the files were already staged then git should have blobs in the git folder, so they should be recoverable.
Looks like they weren't staged. He clicked on the staging option, it showed it would stage thousands of files, he said "hey I should fix my .gitignore" and clicked on what looked like either a "don't stage" or a "forget" button, and it was a "checkout --force" button.
The most impressive thing is all the people doubling down on the idea that a "checkout --force" button in a main interaction screen is a great idea, there's nothing wrong with the software, and the user is a moron.
No backup, no sympathy.
5000 files
0 backups
Someone's got their priorities mixed up.
having 5000 backups of 0 files is also kinda pointless.
You have to lose it all to know what matters (speaking from experience 😭)
Looks like windows should come with a dictionary.
"Huh, discard, I wonder what that does. Let's try it on all my work from the last six months"
Idiots gonna idiot...
Problem is, there's an entire generation of users that have gotten super used to "discard changes" as a means of signalling "on second thought, don't do anything".
Obligatory mention of file recovery as an option if you get in this situation.I recommend testdisk but there are other more gui friendly options.
NTFS takes a relatively long time to destroy the data so chances of recovery are good on Windows.
let's turn this into a constructive angle for future devs and current juniors: just learn git cli, I promise you it is much simpler than it seems.
all those memes about git having like a thousand commands are true, but you really will only use like 7 at most per month.
learn push, pull, merge, squash, stash, reset, im probably missing like one or two
I promise you again: it is much simpler than it seems. and you won't have to use these stupid git GUI things, and it will save you a hassle because you will know what commands you are running and what they do
short disclaimer: using git GUI is totally fine but low-key you are missing out on so much
You get pretty far with just clone, pull, add, commit, push
The main draw to the CLI for me is portability. I've been a dev for ten years now and used tons of different editors on different platforms and while each one had a different way to describe the changes, how to commit, or how to "sync" (shudder), the CLI hasn't changed. I didn't have to relearn a vital part of my workflow just because I wanted to try a different editor.
For a first step you can get away with just add, commit, push, and pull. Maybe reset, but tbh using git like svn at first is fine.
Next branch, checkout and merge. At this point show, log, bisect and blame also start to be useful.
I'm not a fan of stash, and would instead recommend reflog and cherry-pick as the first two advanced commands to learn. Then rebase and squash.
How about Git’s CLI stop being so shit? All of the options are obtuse & usually 3 ways to do the same thing.
Developers should normalize non-Git DVCSs.
Every time I mentor a dev on using git they insist so much on using some GUI. Even ones who are "proficient" take way longer to do any action than I can with cli. I had one dev who came from SVN land try and convince me that TortoiseGit was the only way to go
I died a little that day, and I never won her over to command line despite her coming to me kinda regularly to un-fuck her repository (still one of the best engineers I ever worked with and I honestly miss her... Just not her source control antics)
Currently using Tortoise and SVN for the first time at my job, and I hate it.
If I want to commit a selection of files, but not others, then I'm clicking boxes not typing filenames.
git add -p
I fucking HATE when abstractions over git use cutesy names that git doesn't use.
Honestly no idea why someone would go around a completely unknown menu in a new unknown editor and randomly click things with caution completely out the window. Not having a copy or trying a blank project, not even reading any messages. I mean even if we don't know it's a nuke button, God knows what other edits it could do to your code without you knowing.
This goes beyond rookie mistake. This is something 12 year old me would do. Same with the issue page being 90% swear words.
This is a disease of GUIs. Most people are so used to having their hands held and being unable to make a mistake that when a GUI actually gives you the power to fuck up they don't expect it. I promise you, if this user was using the CLI, this wouldn't have happened as easily.
I promise you, if this user ~~was using the CLI~~ backed up their files, this wouldn't have happened ~~as easily~~.
That too, but it seems like this was them attempting to back up their files. They just critically failed.
Using a program that's not designed to be a backup solution that you are also unfamiliar with sounds even worse. Lol
I don't even know why people ITT are blaming the IDE and completely ignoring this.
When you learn git, you do so on a dummy project, that has 5 files which are 10 characters long each.
An IDE is not made so you can't break things, it is tool, and it should let you do things. It's like complaining that Linux will let you delete your desktop environment. Some people actually want to delete your desktop environment. You can't remove that option just because someone can accidentally do it by ignoring all the warnings.
Got will not delete untracked files though, which is what happened here. If you want to discard changes to a file with git, you first have to commit the file to the index at some point, which means there's only ever so much damage an erroneous "git restore" or "git reset" can do. Specifically, neither of them will delete all the files in an existing project where VC has just been added.
This user was not using git though, he was using vs code. That button doesn't say "git reset" it says "discard all changes". And btw, what it does is "git clean", which is something that git can do.
Just below the button there is a list of all the changes. In his case, there were 3000 changes of the type "file creation". Discarding a file creation can only be made one way: deleting the file.
Anyway, this user is presumably in his learning phase, I would not assume that he knows what git reset or git restore actually do.
In other IDEs this discards tracked changes, untracked files usually stay untouched.
In my opinion, it's a combination of user error and bad implementation here
I feel bad for this kid. That really is a bad warning dialog. Nowhere does it say it's going to delete files. Anyone who thinks that's good design needs a break.
Half the replies are basically "This should be obvious if your past five years of life experience is similar to mine, and if it isn't then get fucked." Just adding insult to injury.
Came here to say this. No one deserves this, not even new programmers who try to learn things.
Some programming tools are really powerful compared to what new users are used to. If you come from the world of Microsoft Office and Apple whatever it's called, everything is saved automatically to cloud and there is some local backup file somewhere which you can just restore. Modern programs are designed to protect users against their own mistakes, and when suddenly that is taken away, it can be a jarring experience.
I'm not great at English, but "discard all changes" shouldn't ever mean "Delete".
the alternative to deleting is emptying the file contents, which is essentially the same...
I'm pretty sure vscode shows a confirmation dialog when discarding changes will permanently delete a file. I've done that recently with temporary files that were no longer needed.
I remember following the drama back in the day. That warning you saw was the result of this now-classic bug report.