Re: I want to release a "git-1.0"

From: Adam Kropelin <akropel1@rochester.rr.com>
Date: Jun 2, 2005, 23:40 UTC
Message-ID: <00e101c567cc$80c0de80$03c8a8c0@kroptech.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0505312002160.1876@ppc970.osdl.org>

Linus Torvalds wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> Anyway, I wrote just a _very_ introductory thing in
> Documentation/tutorial.txt, I'll try to update and expand on it later. 
> It
> basically has a really stupid example of "how to set up a new 
> project".

I've been working my way thru the tutorial, trying to up my git clue level a bit. One part where things start to go a bit pear-shaped for me is in the description of git-diff-files vs. git-diff-cache. The tutorial takes pains to emphasize the difference between "working directory contents", "index file", and "committed tree", and I'm on board with that. What confuses me is the following:

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> Unlike "git-diff-files", which showed the difference between the index
> file and the working directory, "git-diff-cache" shows the differences
> between a committed _tree_ and the index file.
> ...
> [example where git-diff-cache shows difference between working
> directory and committed tree]
> ...
> "git-diff-cache" also has a specific flag "--cached", which is used to
> tell it to show the differences purely with the index file, and ignore
> the current working directory state entirely

The example and the description of --cached seem to contradict the first sentence's description the tool's purpose in life. If it shows you differences between a committed tree and the index file, why is it looking in my working directory at all? In order to get the behavior the first sentence describes you actually have to use --cached.

Am I on right track?

--Adam