Re: Consistent terminology: cached/staged/index

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Feb 27, 2011, 08:43 UTC
Message-ID: <20110227084317.GB3356@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTik-jc0ZX9S4bCYV8VBgPXJZsX0U08W2H+jufO8r@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 11:09:14PM +0200, Felipe Contreras wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 1:19 AM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote:
> > When people talk about the staging area I tend to get confused.  I
> > think there's an idea that because it sounds more concrete, there is
> > less to explain --- or maybe I am just wired the wrong way.
> 
> I don't like the phrase "staging area". A "stage" already has an area.
> You put things on the stage. Sometimes there are multiple stages.

As a native English speaker, this makes no sense to me. A stage as a noun is either:

  1. a raised platform where you give performances

  2. a phase that some process goes through (e.g., "the early stages of
     Alzheimer's disease")

Whereas the term "staging area" is a stopping point on a journey for collecting and organizing items. I couldn't find a definite etymology online, but it seems to be military in origin (e.g., you would send all your tanks to a staging area, then once assembled and organized, begin your attack). You can't just call it "staging", which is not a noun, and the term "stage" is not a synonym. "Staging area" has a very particular meaning.

So the term "staging area" makes perfect sense to me; it is where we collect changes to make a commit. I am willing to accept that does not to others (native English speakers or no), and that we may need to come up with a better term. But I think just calling it "the stage" is even worse; it loses the concept that it is a place for collecting and organizing.

-Peff