Re: [PATCH] git-diff: Add --staged as a synonym for --cached.

> Björn Steinbrink <B.Steinbrink@gmx.de> writes:
> 
> > Looking at --cached/--index we have basically three things:
> >
> >   --cached to refer to the state of the index (diff, grep, [stash], ...)
> >   --cached to _work on_ the index only (rm, apply, ...)
> >   --index to _work on_ both the index and the working tree (apply, ...)
> 
> I think the earlier two are the same thing.  The only difference between
> them is that in the first one, the definition of your "work on" happens to
> be a read-only operation.  Am I mistaken?

> > A quick look through Documentation/ revealed only one problematic case,
> > which is ls-files that already has a --stage option. And that looks like
> > a dealbreaker :-(
> 
> 'ls-files' is primarily about the index contents and all else is a fluff
> ;-)
> 
> You could say --show-stage-too if you wanted to, but the command is a
> plumbing to begin with, so perhaps if we can identify the cases where
> people need to use the command and enhance some Porcelain (likely
> candidate is 'status' or perhaps 'status --short') to give the information
> people use ls-files for, we hopefully wouldn't have to change ls-files
> itself at all.
> 
> The only case I use ls-files these days when I am _using_ git (as opposed
> to developing/debugging git) is "git ls-files -u" to get the list of still
> unmerged paths during a conflicted merge.