Re: [PATCH 6/7] stage: add 'diff' subcommand

On Wed, Aug 11, 2021 at 09:00:18AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

A more notable aspect of the above list is not the similarity but
difference from the rest of Git.  The above organizes various
operations on the staging area in a single command as its operating
modes, so you'd use "git stage --diff" for comparing with the
staging area but use something else ("git commit --diff HEAD"???).

It is a good example that illustrates that the proposed organization
may not help learning or using the system for operations that also
apply to other things like commit and working tree (in other words,
"git stage --grep" may not be such a good idea for the same reason
as "git stage --diff").  But if it were limited to operations that
apply only to the index (e.g. "git add" and "git rm"), it may be an
improvement (I think we added "git stage" synonym exactly for that
reason, already).

One thing I find off-putting about "git stage --diff" is that to me,
"stage" reads as a verb. So it is like "git add --diff", which seems
out-of-place; there are two verbs in a row.

I do not mind the term "staging area", but using "the stage" as a noun
is simply confusing to me in this context.

-Peff