Re: An alternate model for preparing partial commits

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jul 8, 2008, 04:58 UTC
Message-ID: <20080708045855.GA2037@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0806281549060.9925@racer>

On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 03:51:12PM +0100, Johannes Schindelin wrote:

> > Here's a somewhat hackish implementation of "git stash -i" that just 
> > relies on "add -i":
> 
> I like it.

Thinking about this some more, it seems to me to lack one really important feature that "git add -i" has: you must stash all in one go.

That is, I may do some of the adds as "git add <file1> <file2>" and then pick out the rest of the changes with "git add -p". And traditionally, stashing has been about dumping all changes, so everything happened at once.

But I think what I would really like here is to say "now I don't want to stage for a commit; I want to stage into some bucket, so that I can clear my workspace for making the commit". And then proceed to use "add" or "add -i" in the usual way, except that they go into my bucket. And at the end, I switch back to staging for a commit, make the commit, and then start picking things out of my bucket.

And that workflow is not too hard to imagine by just pointing GIT_INDEX_FILE to the bucket.

But I am still thinking on this, so I'll let it percolate and then maybe try to implement something once I have a better sense of exactly what workflow I want. I just thought I would throw it out there for others to ponder.

-Peff