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by pritambaral 2868 days ago
> If one couldn’t avail himself of the defined features of git, then there’d be no reason to build on top of it in the first place.

Sure build on top of it, but don't expect your users to implicitly know the defined, yet obscure, features of git you build on.

> It’s hardly magic.

I didn't claim this is a magic feature in git. I meant the way of `go get`-ing a private library by letting `go get` try and clone from https URLs while silently changing them to git:// URLs in a completely separate layer under it is magic.
1 comments
majewsky 2867 days ago
> Sure build on top of it, but don't expect your users to implicitly know the defined, yet obscure, features of git you build on.

That's what documentation is for. Every application should be documenting (e.g. in README.md) how it can be built.

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pritambaral 2867 days ago
How is the first application developer to know this git (not go) feature exists in the first place? The application developer is looking to use `go get`, and is frustrated that `go get` only downloads via https, asking them for a username and password combo every time. `go get` has no documentation to make it use git URLs.

Only when the application developer looks online for a solution to this do they find some StackOverflow post detailing this workaround. Or other workarounds, like the insecure option of telling git to save your https credentials.

Sure, a knowledgeable application developer can put whatever quirks their build system needs in their documentation; but a developer ignorant of these workarounds shouldn't have to go beyond `go get`'s documentation in the first place.

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