From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:33:53 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] git-diff: Add --staged as a synonym for --cached.
Message-ID: <20081112083353.GB3817@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <32541b130811102004n54a47331v48ba8d299039897f@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 11:04:42PM -0500, Avery Pennarun wrote:

> Speaking just for myself, I would find this all a lot less confusing
> if "staged" were a refspec of some sort, not an option at all.
> 
>    git diff HEAD..STAGED
>    git diff STAGED..WORKTREE
>    git grep pattern STAGED HEAD sillybranch WORKTREE ^ignorebranch --
> path/to/files

I agree that such a thing is reasonably intuitive. I have thought about
"magic" refspecs before; my local git has an "EMPTY" refspec which
points to the empty tree for diffing. However, that was trivial to
implement (since it turns into a sha1), and yours is very hard (since
you will have to pass these "pretend" objects around).

So I think it is a neat idea, but I am not volunteering to work on it.
:)

-Peff