From: Felipe Contreras Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2011 21:09:14 GMT Subject: Re: Consistent terminology: cached/staged/index Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20110214231920.GA24814@elie> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 1:19 AM, Jonathan Nieder wrote: > When people talk about the staging area I tend to get confused.  I > think there's an idea that because it sounds more concrete, there is > less to explain --- or maybe I am just wired the wrong way. I don't like the phrase "staging area". A "stage" already has an area. You put things on the stage. Sometimes there are multiple stages. > There is a .git/index file, with a well defined file format.  And > there is an in-core copy of the index, too.  It contains: > >  - mode and blob name for paths as requested by the user with >   "git add" A commit stage. >  - competing versions for paths whose proposed content is >   uncertain during a merge Multiple commit stages. >  - stat(2) information to speed up comparison with the worktree If only a subset of the files are there, it's an 'index', if not, then I'd say it's a 'registry'. Anyway, it's something the user shouldn't care about. Cheers. -- Felipe Contreras