From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2011 18:51:31 GMT
Subject: Re: non-empty index with git commit -a
Message-ID: <7vpqqrke30.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20110216100622.GA12971@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 09:58:52AM +0000, Sverre Rabbelier wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 09:54, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
>> > So? Your question was whether index state is precious. If it's precious,
>> > shouldn't we be keeping a history of it?
>> 
>> I don't think it's quite _that_ precious, but the only operation that
>> I regularly use that can blow away my carefully constructed index as
>> side effect of doing something else is `git commit -a`.
>
> OK, so how precious is it? :)

The world is not that black-and-white, but is full of different shades of
gray.

If you made mistakes with a second "git add", you can "reset --mixed"
everything away and restart from scratch.  The same thing can be said for
a mistaken "git commit -a" that can be "reset HEAD^" (or --amend).  So
there is not much difference at the technical level.

I don't think this is primarily about "protecting the index".  It is more
about making the user feel better.  Compared to a mistaken second "add", a
mistaken "commit -a" feels like a lot heavier point-of-no-return.