Re: [PATCH] git-diff: Add --staged as a synonym for --cached.

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 12, 2008, 19:29 UTC
Message-ID: <7vljvooi8w.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20081112191512.GA21401@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 16 quoted lines

> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 10:39:21AM -0500, Avery Pennarun wrote:
>
>> > I thought about that at first, too, but the working tree is even more
>> > painful. You would have to hash every changed file on the filesystem to
>> > create the tree object.
>> 
>> Is that so bad?  You have to read all those files anyway in order to
>> do a diff.
>
> I don't know for sure, as I haven't tried it. But you would need to read
> them twice (once to hash, and then once to diff) plus the extra
> computation time of hashing. So assuming you have a decent cache, you
> pay the disk access only once.
>
> Maybe it would be negligible, but I would have to see numbers to be
> convinced either way.

I think you guys are barking up a wrong tree.

The staged state, the work tree state and the committed states are three conceptually different things. Making them stand out as distinct entities at the UI level is a _good thing_.

Introducing STAGED or WORKTREE psuedonym to deliberately muddy the distinction goes against helping the users form a clear vision of what s/he is working on at the conceptual level.