"J. Bruce Fields" [off-list ref] writes:
Yes, the index differs from the work tree or HEAD temporarily,
Temporarily, yes, but the _point_ of having it is to have it differ
from HEAD (otherwise, you can't create a new revision), and from the
tree (otherwise, index-related commands are useless).
The stat-information, and sha1sum are actually a cache, but they don't
have to be user-visible, except for speed. "diff --cached" has nothing
to do with the stat information for the user.
--
Matthieu