Re: Restore a single file in the index back to HEAD

Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy wrote:

On 11/1/06, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

I think at the UI level, the most appropriate place would be
"git reset".  Checkout is a Porcelainish that is primarily about
working tree and it updates the index as a side effect (from the
UI point of view); you can update the working tree without
modifying index or you can update both index and the working
tree, but updating only index and not working tree does not
belong there.

Then perhaps git-reset should do "co HEAD path" too if --index is not

specified?

To sum up:
 - git reset HEAD path -> git checkout HEAD path
 - git reset --index HEAD path -> git-ls-files HEAD path|git
update-index --index-info
 - git reset HEAD (without path) -> the current behaviour

Because  <commit-ish>  may be missing, there is some ambiguation here.

Currently "git reset --soft <commit-ish>" updates current head only, 
"git reset <commit-ish>" is "git reset --mixed <commit-ish>" and updates
head and index, and "git reset --hard <commit-ish>" updates head, index
and working tree.

The same should be the case for "git reset [--soft|--mixed|--hard]
[<commit-ish>] [--] [paths...]", with the exception that it wouldn't
never update current head. (So --soft with pathspec wouldn't make sense).

On the other hand git-reset is mainly about resetting current head,
so perhaps git-reset isn't the best place to update fragments of index
from HEAD branch.
-- 
Jakub Narebski
ShadeHawk on #git
Poland