Re: Consistent terminology: cached/staged/index

> On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 10:34:00AM -0500, Drew Northup wrote:
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "distint unified staging area". It is a
> conceptual idea that you will put your changes somewhere, and when they
> look good to you, then you will finalize them in some way.
>
> But note that it is a mental model. The fact that it is implemented
> inside the index, along with the stat cache, doesn't need to be relevant
> to the user. And the fact that the actual content is in the object
> store, with sha1-identifiers in the index, is not relevant either. At
> least I don't think so, and I am usually of the opinion that we should
> expose the data structures to the user, so that their mental model can
> match what is actually happening. But in this case, I think they can
> still have a pretty useful but simpler mental model.
>
>> If we use "staging area made up of the object store and information kept
>> in the Index" then we tie a knot on everything, make it clear that it
>> may be more complex than that--and you don't have to care, and we do not
>> foreclose on the possibility of more complete explanation later. That
>> does not bother me. We do however need to recognize that "staging area"
>> is an idiom of limited portability and deal with that appropriately.
>
> Sure, I'm willing to accept that the specific words of the idiom aren't
> good for people with different backgrounds.
>
> One analogy I like for the index is that it's a bucket. It starts out
> full of files from the last commit. You can put new, changed files in
> the bucket. When it looks good, you dump the bucket into a commit. You
> can have multiple buckets if you want. You can pull files from other
> commits and put them in the bucket. You can take files out of the bucket
> and put them in your work tree.
>
> So maybe it should just be called "the bucket"?
>
> I'm not sure that's a good idea, because while the analogy makes sense,
> it doesn't by itself convey any meaning. That is, knowing the concept, I
> can see that bucket is a fine term. But hearing about git's bucket, I
> have no clue what it means. Whereas "staging area" I think is a bit more
> specific, _if_ you know what a staging area is.
>
> So there are two questions:
>
>  1. Is there a more universal term that means something like "staging
>     area"?
>
>  2. Is the term "staging area", while meaningful to some, actually
>     _worse_ to others than a term like "bucket"? That is, does it sound
>     complex and scary, when it is really a simple thing. And while
>     people won't know what the "git bucket" is off the bat, it is
>     relatively easy to learn.
>
>     And obviously, replace "bucket" here with whatever term makes more
>     sense.