Re: [PATCH v2 00/14] Officially start moving to the term 'staging area'

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: Oct 18, 2013, 10:36 UTC
Message-ID: <CAMP44s0pA3hKRMbXDx0ddi4RdrUZyMY0yAd5GbQutMqRSj_4Rg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <vpqbo2m7vyz.fsf@anie.imag.fr>

On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 4:46 AM, Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> I'm lacking time to read and answer in detail, sorry.
>
> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
>
>> "It must be done" is different from "any change is good, as long as
>> it introduces more instances of word 'stage'".
>
> I agree. Something must be done, at least to remove the cache Vs index
> confusion. I'm not sure exactly what's best, and we should agree where
> to go before going there.

I thought we already agreed "staging area" is the best term. Some people don't, but that's expected.

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>> The phrase "staging area" is not an everyday phrase or common CS
>> lingo, and that unfortunately makes it a suboptimal choice of words
>> especially to those of us, to whom a large portion of their exposure
>> to the English language is through the command words we use when we
>> talk to our computers.
>
> I do not think being understandable immediately by non-native is so
> important actually. To me as a french, "commit" makes no sense as an
> english word to describe what "git commit" does, but it's OK as I never
> really translate it. Even fr.po translates "a commit" by "un commit".

Indeed. Let's hope this red herring is not brought again.

> That said, having something that immediately makes sense to a non-native
> is obviously a good point.

Most non-native speakers, as most native speakers, already agreed the term "staging area" is best.

> Another proposal which I liked BTW was to use the word "precommit".
> Short, and easily understood as the place where the next commit is
> prepared.

And that proposal has been argued against already[1][2].

To summarize:

1) It's not even an English word
2) Unlike "staging area", it's not widely used in external documentation already
3) There's no sensible verb: "to precommit"?

Moreover, in my mind a true precommit would have author, committer, date; all the things you expect in a commit, except that it's not permanent. A natural command that would derive from this concept is 'git commit --prepare', which would create an actual precommit.

But we are not looking to introduce yet another concept, we are looking for a name of a concept we already have, and the majority of users have already given it a name; the staging area.

[1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/197215 [2] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/168201

-- 
Felipe Contreras