Re: cygwin, 44k files: how to commit only index?

> What may help (and without using assume unchanged) is:
>
>  * skip the `update-index --refresh` part of git-status/git-commit
>  * skip the status template in COMMIT_MSG when using the editor
>
> As Git will still at least make sure a `commit -a` includes
> everything that is dirty.
>
> Files whose modification dates may have been messed with (but
> whose content are unchanged) will just go through expensive SHA1
> computation to arrive at the same value, which is fine.
>
> Users skipping the first part are doing so under the assumption that
> their modification dates are usually always correct, and that then
> they aren't the SHA1 computation of a handful of files is cheap
> compared to stat'ing the entire set of files.
>
> Users skipping the second part are doing so under the assumption
> that knowing the names of the files they are committing doesn't
> really improve their odds of writing a good commit message.