"J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > +The index > +----------- > + > +The index is a binary file (generally kept in .git/index) containing > +a sorted list of path names, each with dates, permissions, and the > +SHA1 of a blob object; gitlink:git-ls-files[1] can show you the > +contents of the index: I would rather see you not say "dates" here. It is there as a part of cached stat information together with ownership and inumber to detect changes, but not part of what will be written out, as you mention later; you already explicitly say "additional information" in point #2 below, so omission of "dates" from here would be consistent with it. While I agree dropping "aka dircache" from the description, I think we should say that this is exactly the same thing as what used to be called "cache" and hint that you might still see it referred to by that name elsewhere (but not in this document), because google and mail archive do not forget and people do not update pages they put on the web. > ... > +2. The index enables fast comparisons between the tree object it defines > +and the working tree. > ++ > +It does this by storing some additional data for each entry (such as > +the last modified time). This data is not displayed above, and is not > +stored in the created tree object, but it can be used to determine > +quickly which files in the working directory differ from what was > +stored in the index, and thus save git from having to read all of the > +data from such files to look for changes. - 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
