Re: Importing from tarballs; add, rm, update-index?

From: Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>
Date: Jan 13, 2007, 18:54 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0701131340040.2577@xanadu.home>
In-Reply-To: <87y7o6x60w.wl%cworth@cworth.org>

On Sat, 13 Jan 2007, Carl Worth wrote:

> Anyway, did I succeed in pointing out why some of us think that the
> "add a new path (with content) to the index" and the "update content
> for existing path" really shouldn't be mixed up in the same "add"
> command?

Not really.

The fact is that there is no strong reason why they shouldn't. But there are good reasons why they should. The most important one being that the user doesn't need to bother deciding which one of the two commands should be used in any given situation. And because a single command can cover two _technically_ different cases transparently is a pretty good reason for not imposing this technical issue to the user.

But remember that git-update-index is still and will always be available to you for fancier and more fine grained control if/when you have a special need for it. This is not the case for the vast majority of users though and the primary user interface should reflect that.

Nicolas