Re: [PATCH 2/4] commit: introduce a config key to allow as-is commit with i-t-a entries

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

OK, sorry for wavering.

Unless you are doing "commit -a" or "commit pathspec", you are responsible for adding all contents you want to have in the commit before you run the "git commit" command (and for the purpose of this statement, "add -N" to tell Git to keey an eye on a path does _not_ add contents). A change to the file in the working tree that is left unadded is what you decided to deliberately leave out of the commit, be it a change to a path already in HEAD, or a path marked with "add -N". Forgetting to add modified file and forgetting to add a file you earlier used "add -N" amount to the same kind of risk, and "git status" is the way to make sure your partial commit has exactly what you want (if you are not worried about partial commit, you would be doing "commit -a", so the "safety" is a moot point).

I was worried too much about backward compatibility and was blind to the above, and was mistakenly defending a false "safety" that did not exist at all. Sorry for wasting everybody's time.

So let's bite the bullet and admit in the Release Notes that the current behaviour was a UI mistake based on the misguided assumption that we can give some kind of "safety" by committing when there are "add -N" entries in the index, which is untrue, and we are fixing it in the new release. We do not need configuration nor command line options.

Let me try to reroll your patch tomorrow (unless you beat me to it) and see if I can come up with an easy-to-understand explanation to it.

Thanks.