From: William Swanson <swansontec@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 04 Sep 2013 06:08:44 GMT
Subject: Re: Officially start moving to the term 'staging area'
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