Re: A few usability question about git diff --cached

On Thu, Oct 04, 2007 at 04:44:00PM +0200, Matthieu Moy wrote:

Johannes Schindelin [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Hi,

On Thu, 4 Oct 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

 * --cached means work only on index and ignore work tree.

I guess I could live with "--staged" as a synonym for "--cached" (and 
maybe deprecating "--cached").

It makes more sense to me.

For me, a "cache" is a fast-access copy of something, that I can
rebuild at any time. Cache should be only a matter of performance, if
the "cache" for an application changes its functionality, it means the
cache has been too optimistic. Git's index is not that, "git add"
means "add this to the index", which itself means "put that in the
list of things to commit", and not "get a copy of that to work faster
with it".

Yes, the index differs from the work tree or HEAD temporarily, but most
of it's life it's just a fast-access copy of something that you can
rebuild at any time.

So it's partly a "cache", partly a "staging area", and "index" is as
good a term for it as any.

--b.