Re: Call Me Gitless

From: Teemu Likonen <tlikonen@iki.fi>
Date: Aug 19, 2008, 08:56 UTC
Message-ID: <20080819085622.GA6261@mithlond.arda.local>
In-Reply-To: <48AA7BE9.4040108@sneakemail.com>

"Peter Valdemar Mørch (Lists)" wrote (2008-08-19 09:53 +0200):

Show 8 quoted lines

> Also, in the same area, I've now understood that to undo a "git add" - 
> to remove a change from the index and making it show up as a difference 
> between the working tree and the index - one can use "git reset" 
> (without --hard). Would've been helpful to me to have a sentense or 
> paragraph about that in git-add.txt, or even in git-reset.txt. (I guess 
> it is there in some form  in git-reset.txt, but not clearly. The "Undo 
> add" example talks about a dirty index and pull) I missed the simple 
> relationship between git-add and git-reset for a long time.

I quite agree here. I've used git about six months now and I'm quite familiar with the porcelain layer. I don't even care about the plumbing (even though I've used some plumbing commands in a script).

Anyway, to me the index wasn't difficult. It took about two days to be _comfortable_ enough with the idea of staging area for commits but it wasn't too hard. I have been a lot more confused with the

    git reset <commit> -- <file>
    git checkout <commit> -- <file>

business. These commands still aren't completely clear to me but it has been helpful that "git status" prints info about how to get back changes from the index. I think the info is a good idea because "git status" is, to me at least, a general "give me some clue" command.

I think the confusion with reset and checkout comes from the fact that first I learned that "git checkout" changes branches and later that it can actually check-out any commits. Checking out a file to overwrite one in the working directory is something I'd expect from "git reset". I don't think that documentation would have helped much; it's more about the double meaning of the commands.