Jon Seymour <jon.seymour@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > I guess the noun 'stage' does have a use in git-speak to refer to the > different arms of an unresolved merge. That is correct. For some historical background around "cache" and "index", this http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/780/focus=924 may shed some light. From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxx> Subject: Re: [RFC] Possible strategy cleanup for git add/remove/diff etc. Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 18:51:06 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0504191846290.6467@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> That is indeed the whole point of the index file. In my world-view, the index file does _everything_. It's the staging area ("work file"), it's the merging area ("merge directory") and it's the cache file ("stat cache"). And this one: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/6670/focus=6863 is even more illuminating. Notice that the word "staging area" is used in the old article as a way to explain one of the three important aspects of the index, and the other article that is about nailing down the terminology, the word does not even come into the picture at all (one reason being that it will confuse readers if "staging area" is used too casually in a document to precisely define terminology, which needs to explain the merge stage(s) in the index). -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html