Re: Definition of "the Git repository"

From: Kevin Buckley <kevin.buckley@pawsey.org.au>
Date: Jun 29, 2021, 01:57 UTC
Message-ID: <a5579940-237b-2e4d-bf18-bc0a8f2f1ee3@pawsey.org.au>
In-Reply-To: <60d95c6024f3d_aaf7e208a4@natae.notmuch>

On 2021/06/28 13:21, Felipe Contreras wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> 
> To try to make it more orthogonal, let's suppose the index file was
> outside the .git directory. Would you consider then the staging area
> separate from the repository?
> 
> In fact, we don't have to suppose:
> 
>    GIT_INDEX_FILE=/tmp/index git checkout @~ -- .
> 
> Does that command change the repository in any way?

  
I have to admit that I don't know, and that I can't immediately
see where the "repository" would be, in that example. This is
obviously a gap in my understanding: happy to defer to yours.

I do however feel that the fact that we have moved to using examples that override the Git Index file on the command line, in order to define what a "repository" is, just so that we might be able to give a "more correct" definition of the term, to someone completely new to Git, suggests that, as others have already noted in the discussion, it's not easy to be "correct"?

Kevin