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

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 4, 2007, 14:40 UTC
Message-ID: <7vhcl79c4l.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0710041534000.4174@racer.site>

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> On Thu, 4 Oct 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>>  * --cached means work only on index and ignore work tree.
>
> I guess I could live with "--staged" as a synonym for "--cached" (and 
> maybe deprecating "--cached").

A handy mnemonic might be:

 * --index means work work tree through the index.  Once you get
   git, this is natural as you would not interact with files in
   the work tree that is not known to the index.

 * --cached means work only on the cached information in index.

Any change like swapping them or renaming --cached to --index and making something else to mean what --index always meant will break existing setups and people's scripts. Won't happen.

Giving them synonyms without deprecation is a viable option, if necessary. I do not however see the need yet. A few people who haven't learned the lingo of the land yet can worry about possible confusion, but I do not think that "worry" itself does not count as real need.