Re: Can I checkout a single file without altering index?

From: Neal Kreitzinger <neal@rsss.com>
Date: Oct 15, 2010, 18:30 UTC
Message-ID: <i9a6kn$d7o$1@dough.gmane.org>
In-Reply-To: <loom.20101014T095743-275@post.gmane.org>

"Christian Halstrick" <christian.halstrick@gmail.com> wrote in message news:loom.20101014T095743-275@post.gmane.org...

Show 14 quoted lines

> Thank's a lot for all your responses. I know now how to solve my problem. 
> I'll
> definitely not going to commit my unit-test before my fix and publish that
> because then I would have commits in the history where tests fail. But 
> other
> suggested solutions do work.
>
> Still, all that sounds like workarounds for a lacking feature. Checkout 
> content
> to the worktree without altering the index. What do you think, couldn't 
> that be
> added as an option to checkout?
>
> -- Chris

FWIW, my understanding of the index is that it is the middle-man for moving things from your work-tree to the object-store AND for moving things from the object-store to your work-tree. Therefore, when you checkout the blob, it first gets copied from the object-store to your index and then from the index to your work-tree.

However, there is an option in git-commit to copy files directly from the working-tree to the object-store by totally bypassing the index, but no one seems to do this or recommend doing this as normative practice. None the less, this "exception" in the git-commit manpage does seem to set the precedent, so maybe it is also conceivable to copy objects directly from the object-store to the work-tree by totally bypassing the index.

Please note that I am responding because I am interested in the discussion and not because I know the answer. I am not a git programmer so my observations only symptomatic and/or theoretical as a user.

v/r, Neal