Re: [PATCH 2/5] apply: read in the index in --intent-to-add mode

From: Raymond E. Pasco <ray@ameretat.dev>
Date: Jul 1, 2025, 05:32 UTC
Message-ID: <i5mft6pima4ft4gyhluoflktnr22dzl6vc2txqfwvhldecdk5b@rkfdkf2ryci7>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqbjq512y5.fsf@gitster.g>

On 25/06/30 11:47AM, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 17 quoted lines

> "Raymond E. Pasco" <ray@ameretat.dev> writes:
> 
> > There are three main modes of operation for apply: applying only to the
> > worktree, applying to the worktree and index (--index), and applying
> > only to the index (--cached).
> >
> > The --intent-to-add flag modifies the first of these modes, applying
> > only to the worktree, in a way which touches the index, because
> > intents to add are special index entries. However, it has not ever
> > worked correctly in any but the most trivial (empty repository)
> > cases, because the index was never read in (in apply, this is done
> > in read_apply_cache()) before writing to it.
> 
> As the inventor of "add -N", I think what "apply -N" does may be
> wrong (only judging from the above description; it's been a while
> since I really read the code in apply.c).  It does not make any
> sense to write a new index that has only the ITA entries.

Yeah, that's the bug; it writes a new index with just ITA entries (iow, the index thinks every existing file has been deleted); the fix is to instead write ITA entries to the existing index, not make a new one. And the root cause is not having read the index, so it's starting from an empty tree.