Re: [PATCH v2 4/4] doc: git-add: explain inconsistent terminology

From: Julia Evans <julia@jvns.ca>
Date: Aug 19, 2025, 20:09 UTC
Message-ID: <f168115c-1ec4-4723-94ac-7e22dfcedb39@app.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqldnlwmc5.fsf@gitster.g>

Show 5 quoted lines

> Here is my attempt to improve the situation by giving a definition
> of "staging area" in the glossary.  Luckily, "cache" already has its
> own entry, describing it as an old synonym to the 'index', so I
> didn't have to do anything there.  Also the description of 'index'
> has a bit too much implementation detail, which I toned down.

I love the idea of improving the glossary, but I'm concerned that glossary isn't very discoverable -- I didn't even know Git had a glossary until relatively recently.

I think we can be much more brief about resolving this confusion though -- from the user feedback, all users seem to want to know is whether "index" and "staging area" mean the same thing, and that we can clear that up in just a few words -- 'index (also known as "staging area")'.