Re: Better handling of local changes in 'gitk'?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 12, 2007, 20:48 UTC
Message-ID: <7vejjdtkl0.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <7vir8ptksi.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

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

Show 21 quoted lines

> Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> writes:
>
>> I like how gitk shows the local changes as an unnamed commit at the top, 
>> but what I *don't* like is how it just ignored the difference between 
>> stuff that has been added to the index, and stuff that hasn't..
>>
>> It would be very nice to have *two* such commits (either or both of which 
>> just disappear), where the top-most is the diff to the index, and the 
>> second is the diff from the index to HEAD.
>>
>> That would not only be useful in general, it would be a wonderful way to 
>> visually introduce people to the notion of what the staging area is all 
>> about.
>
> Interesting, as I was thinking about something similar when I
> typed "git show stash" by mistake. I meant to say "git stash
> show", but "git show stash" output actually was even closer to
> what I wanted to see.
>
> "git stash" internally creates two commits, based on your HEAD:
> ...

Clarification. I do not mean gitk should create such a view using git-stash (for one thing that would nuke your local modifications after saving it away). I just meant that I agree with you that --cc between HEAD, index and the working tree is a wonderful way to view the current state.

It might make sense to teach "git diff" itself to show this 3-way diff with a new option ("git diff --h-i-w"). The necessary machinery is already there to handle "git diff maint master next pu" (four trees!), and "git diff maint:Makefile master:Makefile next:Makefile" (three blobs).