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

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Nov 12, 2008, 19:37 UTC
Message-ID: <20081112193747.GA21567@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <7vljvooi8w.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 11:29:35AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> I think you guys are barking up a wrong tree.
> 
> The staged state, the work tree state and the committed states are three
> conceptually different things.  Making them stand out as distinct entities
> at the UI level is a _good thing_.

I'm not sure I agree. They _are_ different things, but in the case of diff, you are really treating each of them like a tree (which makes range operators a little silly, but then that is a silliness already present in "git diff tree1..tree2").

But again, I would not be convinced this is a good direction until I saw:

 - the actual design, especially to what degree any ugliness is exposed
   when we realize that they _aren't_ trees. IOW, how badly does this
   abstraction leak?

 - numbers showing that it isn't going to perform significantly worse

And I'm still not volunteering to work on it, so somebody else will have to come up with those things. ;)

-Peff