Re: [PATCH 0/2] Making "git commit" to mean "git commit -a".

From: Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>
Date: Dec 1, 2006, 18:27 UTC
Message-ID: <20061201182740.GB31025@spearce.org>
In-Reply-To: <eknj33$q2r$1@sea.gmane.org>

Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Robert Shearman wrote:
> 
> > Having the index exposed for even simple operations means that the user 
> > has to initially learn three states instead of two. The worst thing 
> > about the index is that it is a limbo state. The committed content is in 
> > the history and can be viewed by gitk (and other tools that the user 
> > will be introduced to later) and the working tree is exactly what the 
> > user sees in their editor. Having a hidden state isn't very good from an 
> > HCI point of view.
> 
> Index is accessible, just like committed contents. The fact that gitk, qgit,
> git-gui doesn't display state of index is their limitation.

Actually git-gui shows the index, but not quite as well as diff and friends would.

But based on this thread I had a major realization: git-gui is totally wrong in how it displays files (and therefore gitool is too!). I'm going to rewrite that part of git-gui's UI, hopefully early next week.

Linus is right: To deny the index is to deny git itself. Trying to hide part of the index in git-gui is just wrong and makes things like merge conflict resolutions harder, not easier.