Re: A few usability question about git diff --cached

From: Wincent Colaiuta <win@wincent.com>
Date: Oct 4, 2007, 14:09 UTC
Message-ID: <5159468E-C263-4F7B-AEBA-8392C4742C47@wincent.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vy7ej9g38.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

El 4/10/2007, a las 15:14, Junio C Hamano escribió:

Show 21 quoted lines

> Miklos Vajna <vmiklos@frugalware.org> writes:
>
>> On Thu, Oct 04, 2007 at 02:27:41PM +0200, Paolo Ciarrocchi  
>> <paolo.ciarrocchi@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Why do we have the option "--cached" and not "--index"?
>>
>> according to glossary.txt, 'cache' is an obsolete for 'index'.  
>> probably
>> this is the reason
>>
>> probably cache.h will be never renamed to index.h, i don't know if  
>> diff
>> --cached will be ever renamed to diff --index
>
> Probably never.
>
> Some commands support both --index and --cached and have
> different meanings.  For them,
>
>  * --index means work on both index and work tree;
>  * --cached means work only on index and ignore work tree.

Look at that with fresh eyes and you can see how it makes very little sense.

The option named "--index" works on more than the index and the option named "--cached" works only on the index. This sounds back-to- front.

IMO, better names would be:

--index : means work only on the index (and ignore the work tree); ie. it means what it says

--index-and-worktree : it also means what it says

The latter is more keystrokes but it's clearer.

Having said all this, I recognize that the likelihood of these option names ever being changed is close to zero. Like Paolo says in his other email, the documentation could be made clearer to avoid possible confusion.

Cheers, Wincent