Re: [PATCH 3/3] commit -a -m: allow the top-level tree to become empty again

> That logic was introduced to add a shortcut when committing without
> editing the commit message interactively. A part of that logic was to
> ensure that the index was read into memory:
>
> 	if (!active_nr && read_cache() < 0)
> 		die(...)
>
> Translation to English: If the index has not yet been read, read it, and
> if that fails, error out.

> And it was natural to do it this way because at the time that condition
> was introduced, the `index_state` structure had no explicit flag to
> indicate that it was initialized: This flag was only introduced in
> 913e0e99b6a (unpack_trees(): protect the handcrafted in-core index from
> read_cache(), 2008-08-23), but that commit did not adjust the code path
> where no index file was found and a new, pristine index was initialized.

> Using the `initialized` flag instead, we avoid that mistake, and as a
> bonus we can fix a bug at the same time that was introduced by the
> memory leak fix: When deleting all tracked files and then asking `git
> commit -a -m ...` to commit the result, Git would internally update the
> index, then discard and re-read the index undoing the update, and fail
> to commit anything.