Re: [PATCH 6/7] stage: add 'diff' subcommand

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 11, 2021, 21:40 UTC
Message-ID: <611443ebea222_1ed62089f@natae.notmuch>
In-Reply-To: <162871314612.7067.6886805754107701040.git@grubix.eu>

Michael J Gruber wrote:

> Therefore, "git stage" as an alias to "git add" does not serve the purpose
> of establishing "staging area" very well, and "git stage --diff" shows
> exactly the problem with turning an "object-like item" into a "verb-like
> command".

But "stage" can be a noun in English too. Just like "branch" can be both a verb and a noun.

Show 5 quoted lines

> I still think it's very worthwhile to fantasize about a git which has
> only verb-like commands (such as diff, add, checkout, checkin) and a
> consistent way of specifying the objects to act upon (possibly amended
> by "git pluralnoun" being synonymous to "git ls noun" or similar
> convenience shortcuts).

There was a sub-thread in which we fantasized a consistent UI [1], and taking Mercurial as inspiration the way to fix some of the warts would be:

  git branch          # verb
  git branches new    # noun verb
  git branches delete # noun verb

Now, it's pretty unlikely that the inconsistencies with `git branch` will ever be fixed, but we can take that as guidance for the staging area:

  git stage               # verb
  git unstage             # verb
  git staging-area add    # noun verb
  git staging-area remove # noun verb
  git staging-area diff   # noun verb

This I think would be the most consistent way of implementing this, my only problem is that 'staging-area' is too long. Of course users could easily write aliases, but git should be easy to use by default.

If git implemented default aliases as I suggested [2], then I would have no problem with 'staging-area', because the user could simply do:

  git sa diff

But that's a very big *if*.

Cheers.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/git/f0770358-be4c-a747-0851-b2fd73c1978e@mfriebe.de/ [2] http://lore.kernel.org/git/20210702100506.1422429-1-felipe.contreras@gmail.com

-- 
Felipe Contreras