Re: Call Me Gitless

From: Matthieu Moy <matthieu.moy@imag.fr>
Date: Aug 19, 2008, 09:11 UTC
Message-ID: <vpqk5edid2y.fsf@bauges.imag.fr>
In-Reply-To: <ee521d6f0808190157s6a676a75t2ba3ef095f608431@mail.gmail.com>

"Alexander E Genaud" <alex@genaud.net> writes:

> There is no indication in the documentation distinguishing porcelain
> from plumbing.

Well, there is somehow one: "git" and "git help" show just the porcelain. Still, I agree with you: marking plumbing as such more explicitely could help newbies not to bother with it. For example, "man git-update-index" could say right after the synopsys something like "This command is meant for scripting purpose. See git-add and git-rm for a user-friendly interface".

> Git-add adds to the index but does not create, however git-rm
> removes from the index and does delete (an --index-only or --keep
> flag might be nice).

git rm actually had a documented --cached flag now, and git rm gives an error message pointing to it in the case where it would lose data and --force is not provided.

> A single term for cache and index should be decided upon.

+1 on this.

I find "staging area" the most explicit wording for users, but I say that as a non-native english speaker.

Unfortunately, it's not only a matter of documentation. Renaming "git diff --cached" to "git diff --staged" would cause backward compatibility problems for example.

-- 
Matthieu