On Thu, Nov 30, 2006 at 07:58:09AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: > So I wanted to make it clear that I never have that situation, because I > never leave the index "dirty". I agree that there is nothing odd about it, > but I think that people who don't actively use the index (or don't use git > at all, and just worry about it) see it as a kind of separate entity with > a life all its own. Well, sure, because the documentation *talks* about it as a separate entity all its own. Just look at the man page for git-diff as a great example of this, or the ascii art diagram of the index. It is all technically _correct_, but it is scary as all heck. > I can see that if you think the index is likely to be out of kilter with > HEAD, you'd always worry about "ok, so maybe the diff I get from 'git > diff' isn't the _true_ diff, so now I have to do _both_ 'git diff' and > 'git diff HEAD' to make sure I know what's up". > > I just wanted to clarify that that is never the case for me, and I doubt > anybody else really does it either. But then why is the default for "git commit" to commit the index, if the index is almost == HEAD? And why is git-update-index given such prominence in the documentation? > In other words, the fact that the index _normally_ matches the HEAD may be > obvious, but it's also important - it's important to allay fears from > non-index users about it being somehow scary and confusing. It's not. If everyone agrees with this, I think it would be easier to make changes to the documentation and maybe some UI tweaks about what the default might be. One suggestion is that perhaps a mode where warns users when index != HEAD for certain critical commands might not be a bad thing. That might give users that are just graduating beyond novice git usage, and just starting to become aware of the index, reassurance because if they *don't* see the warning message, they can rest assured that they don't have to do both "git diff" and "git diff HEAD", for example. - Ted - 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