Re: Git terminology: remote, add, track, stage, etc.

On Fri, 2010-10-22 at 13:07 +0900, Miles Bader wrote:

Whether "git add" or "git stage" makes any sense (or either one more than the other) depends on the user having some specific knowledge of how VCS/SCM works and in particular some knowledge specific to git. For me, "git add" was virtually automatic having had some exposure to CVS and SVN (thankfully CVS only in the past!). Once I got to the part of the instructions where it was made clear that git does not PERPETUALLY AND AUTOMATICALLY CAPTURE the state of CONTENT known to it the idiom of "git add" working to ADD THE CURRENT STATE of content in a file made perfect sense to me. The idiom of "git stage" is likewise. One must understand that in git all changes must be staged to the index manually before they can be acted upon in a commit. Neither one is particularly obvious to somebody who hasn't attempted to understand how git works yet--just as the traffic concept of right-of-way oft befuddles teenagers as if they were martians visiting Times Square.

What I was asking, specifically, was how "git stage" was to act in the given scenario. In particular I wanted to make sure that the workflow of "make known to git, modify, add/stage changes to index, <repeat previous two if needed>, commit, etc." did not change to include some sort of PERPETUAL AUTOMATIC TRACKING as done with CVS/SVN (and frankly at times a rather annoying prospect). Obviously I could not just ask that outright and expect to get some idea of what my interlocutor was thinking and how he internally conceived the idiom as well as an answer to the direct question at hand.

How's that for a long answer to a seemingly simple question?