Re: [FAQ?] Rationale for git's way to manage the index

From: Martin Langhoff <martin.langhoff@gmail.com>
Date: May 8, 2007, 03:16 UTC
Message-ID: <46a038f90705072016x17bd60c3ic779459438ffc19@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <vpqbqgxak1i.fsf@bauges.imag.fr>

On 5/7/07, Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@imag.fr> wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> writes:
>
> > On Sun, 6 May 2007, Matthieu Moy wrote:
> >>
> >> But the fact that git actually remembers the _content_ of files in the
> >> index, and that the default behavior for "commit" is to commit only
> >> the content that is explicitely "git add"ed is something I've never
> >> seen outside git.
> >
> > Yeah. You'd better get used to it, because it's fundamental.
>
> Thanks a lot for the detailed explanations.

Heh. Making the index very visible makes sense when you are merging, Linus and Junio are both integrators and spend a lot of time merging. Hence the default is for git-commit to observe the index.

I agree with Linus' other points too, but at the end of the day, it makes life easier and saner mainly when merging, at the expense of having to pay a bit more attention in common commits. The tradeoff makes sense _specially_ if you are the integrator.

So I do git-commit -a, and typing that '-a' is small price to pay for the best SCM I've ever used ;-)

cheers,

martin