From: Linus Torvalds Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 18:22:46 GMT Subject: Re: Seeing various mode changes on cygwin Message-ID: In-Reply-To: On Mon, 10 Oct 2005, Daniel Barkalow wrote: > > Actually, you're right; it is information about the behavior of the > working tree, and is also needed if you want to compare the working tree > against a tree object, in which case you aren't using the index at all. Git _always_ uses the index for working tree operations. It may take the actual file _data_ from the working tree, but it will take the list of files from the index, so it's certainly possible to link the index to the working tree. That said, I don't think it's necessarily a good idea. You can have temporary indexes for various operations that ignore the main one (ie any random GIT_INDEX_FILE=tmp git-read-tree ... will create a new index). So I think it's much better to have a config file. I'll write something up. Make it extensible while at it. Linus