Re: [PATCH] Add --show-touched option to show "diff --git" line when contents are unchanged

Matthieu Moy [off-list ref] writes:

Also, is there any particular reason not to update the index stat
information when files are found to be identical?

Very much --- diff is a read-only operation.

"git-status $args" on the other hand is a preview of "what would
happen if I say 'git-commit $args'", and in order to compute
that, you would fundamentally need to be able to write into the
object store.  In a special case of giving empty $args it can be
read-only.  The commit Dscho quoted earlier was to hack that
around so that "git-status" can pretend to be a read-only
operation in a repository you do not have write permission to.