Re: Officially start moving to the term 'staging area'

From: William Swanson <swansontec@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 4, 2013, 06:08 UTC
Message-ID: <CABjHNoR637ecLnnLwhj59ddnhy8Lcyk+2YzAqN=nxWN7-BkivA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20130829180129.GA4880@nysa>

On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 11:01 AM, Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> wrote:

> It has been discussed many times in the past that 'index' is not an
> appropriate description for what the high-level user does with it, and
> it has been agreed that 'staging area' is the best term.

I realize Git is not a democracy, but if the vote of a humble user counts for anything, I agree that "index" is a terrible name.

I was very excited when Felipe first started this thread, since I thought Git might finally fix one of it's biggest long-standing usability problems. Calling this thing the "index" is like calling an important variable "someValue." While the name may be technically correct, it's way too generic to be useful. A name like "staging area" may not capture the whole idea, but at least it provides a good clue about what it does and how you might use it.

If we change this, I'm pretty sure most of the Internet will rejoice. Only a few old-timers will be grumpy, but that's just because they don't like change in general. I have never met anybody (outside this thread) who thought the current name was a good idea.

-William