From: Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2006 15:26:09 GMT
Subject: Re: svn versus git
Message-ID: <fcaeb9bf0612150726o40527552l8b3564ddcc3adb94@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.63.0612150118190.3635@wbgn013.biozentrum.uni-wuerzburg.de>

Hi,

On 12/15/06, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Fri, 15 Dec 2006, Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy wrote:
>
> > On 12/14/06, Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> > > > > - have you seen the patch for git-show today, which would include this
> > > > > functionality?
> > > >
> > > > I didn't. From the patch, it seems git-show can show the index via
> > > > ::file syntax. If so, I'd like withdraw my opinion. '::file' syntax is
> > > > not intuitive though. Perhaps you should mention that it can show
> > > > index (and how) in the git-show document
> > >
> > > Well, you can reference blobs that way, but not trees.
> >
> > Oh, yeah. Isn't this a good oppotunity to add --index option to git-show?
> > git-show --index will show the index. git-show --index file will show
> > the file content. This makes git-show a little unconsistent though as
> > it may or may not require argument <object>.
> >
> > Another option is treat '::' alone specially -- call git-ls-files.
>
> Hmm. I don't know... It would make the code rather messy. And are you
> really interested in the content stored in the index? In all cases I can
> think of, you are better off with a diff vs. working directory or ref.

When I worked with index the first time, I had difficulty knowing what
was in index. Index is, unlike working directory, intangible. I could
use git-diff (and actually did), but it was still better if I could
have seen what exactly was in index.

To me, index and object database are (to some extent) the same: both
are used to store files. If I can examine git object database, why not
index?

About adding index support to git-show, yes it's really messy. index
doesn't have tree objects. If a user wants to list a subdirectory in
index, git-show will have to do more work, I think. Perhaps we should
forget this for now.
--