From: Michael J Gruber <git@drmicha.warpmail.net>
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 09:38:19 GMT
Subject: Re: Consistent terminology: cached/staged/index
Message-ID: <4D6B6D0B.3040304@drmicha.warpmail.net>
In-Reply-To: <7vmxlhm3ne.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Junio C Hamano venit, vidit, dixit 28.02.2011 00:57:
> Jon Seymour <jon.seymour@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> I guess the noun 'stage' does have a use in git-speak to refer to the
>> different arms of an unresolved merge.
> 
> That is correct.
> 
> For some historical background around "cache" and "index", this
> 
>   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/780/focus=924
> 
> may shed some light.
> 
>     From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
>     Subject: Re: [RFC] Possible strategy cleanup for git add/remove/diff etc.
>     Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 18:51:06 -0700 (PDT)
>     Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0504191846290.6467@ppc970.osdl.org>
> 
>     That is indeed the whole point of the index file. In my world-view, the
>     index file does _everything_. It's the staging area ("work file"), it's
>     the merging area ("merge directory") and it's the cache file ("stat
>     cache").
> 
> And this one:
> 
>   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/6670/focus=6863
> 
> is even more illuminating.
> 
> Notice that the word "staging area" is used in the old article as a way to
> explain one of the three important aspects of the index, and the other
> article that is about nailing down the terminology, the word does not even
> come into the picture at all (one reason being that it will confuse
> readers if "staging area" is used too casually in a document to precisely
> define terminology, which needs to explain the merge stage(s) in the
> index).

Oh, the classics :)

Thanks for an illuminating and entertaining read!

Michael