CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xcodegit
Igor
Igor

Reputation: 6285

How to capitalize Xcode, Git, git, and HEAD

Sorry if this is not directly related to the programming.

What is the proper (official spelling of the words "GIT HEAD" and "XCODE"?

I know the latter used to be spelled "XCode", but now it seems "Xcode" is used.

The reason for question is: I am doing a lot of postings on forums and I want to make everything right.

Upvotes: 9

Views: 3830

Answers (4)

rob mayoff
rob mayoff

Reputation: 385988

Xcode has always been “Xcode” with a capital “X” and a lower-case “c”. Here's the press release dated June 23, 2003 announcing the first release of Xcode. Here's a video of Steve Jobs introducing Xcode 1.0 at WWDC 2003, and at 59m10s it clearly says “Xcode” on the slide.

“Git”, when referring to the system, is a proper noun and is therefore, by English language convention, spelled “Git” with a capital “G”. Example sentence from the Git User Manual:

It will be useful to have a Git repository to experiment with as you read this manual.

The command-line program that provides access to the system is “git” with a lower-case “g”, because all-lowercase is the historic convention for Unix commands. If your filesystem is case-insensitive (which is the default on OS X), you can sometimes get away with capitalizing some or all of its letters, but it's a bad idea to make that a habit.

The currently-checked out commit in Git is spelled “HEAD” in all capitals, because that string is embedded in the git source code in many places. Example:

if (resolve_gitlink_ref(submodule, "HEAD", oid.hash) == 0)

You can sometimes get away with not capitalizing some or all of the letters if your filesystem is case-insensitive (which is the default on OS X), but it's a bad idea to make that a habit.

Upvotes: 15

VonC
VonC

Reputation: 1328542

To illustrate that Git would never be spelled GIT, consider Git 2.28 (Q3 2020) and its doc updates.

See commit 788db14 (07 Jun 2020) by Denton Liu (Denton-L).
(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 653a351, 18 Jun 2020)

t/README: avoid poor-man's small caps GIT

Signed-off-by: Denton Liu

In 48a8c26c62 ("Documentation: avoid poor-man's small caps GIT", 2013-01-21, Git v1.8.2-rc0 -- merge), the documentation was amended to spell Git's name as Git when talking about the system as a whole.
However, t/README was skipped over when the treatment was applied.

Bring t/README into conformance with the CodingGuidelines by casing "Git" properly.

While we're at it, fix a small typo. Change "the git internal" to "the Git internals".

"git" is reserved for commands. Git for the product. GIT for... nobody.

Upvotes: 3

user6214440
user6214440

Reputation:

The official shop page of Xcode writes "Xcode".

As for "git head" I do not think it's particularly important. The Application's name is (again acording to its official website) "Git". The Git command is "git" and the reference is uppercase "HEAD".

But it's more important to be polite and precise when asking questions on forums than correct casing in product names. :)

Upvotes: 0

Gregg
Gregg

Reputation: 2624

git HEAD

HEAD is a file in the .git directory that points to the current branch or commit if detached.

git is the name of the executable file (file extension is operating system dependent)

Upvotes: 0

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