From: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 19:34:47 GMT
Subject: Re: [Census] So who uses git?
Message-ID: <43E10D57.4060307@zytor.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0601310926330.7301@g5.osdl.org>

Linus Torvalds wrote:
>>
>>For example, I had a hard time explaining to a friend why a git-add'ed 
>>file is committed when saying "git commit some_other_file", but not 
>>another (modified) file. Very unintuitive.
> 
> I really think you should explain it one of two ways:
> 
>  - ignore it. Never _ever_ use git-update-index directly, and don't tell 
>    people about use individual filenames to git-commit. Maybe even add 
>    "-a" by default to the git-commit flags as a special installation 
>    addition.
> 
>  - talk about the index, and revel in it as a way to explain the staging 
>    area. This is what the old tutorial.txt did before it got simplified.
> 
> The "ignore the index" approach is the simple one to explain. It's 
> strictly less powerful, but hey, what else is new? 
> 

I think both of these are probably the wrong answer, and it's pretty 
much a matter of the git model violating the principle of least 
surprise.  Perhaps added (or removed?) files need to be handled in a 
different way than they currently are.

	-hpa