Re: [PATCH RFC v2 05/16] cache-tree: allow writing in-memory index as tree

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 25, 2025, 16:38 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqjz2rs6fk.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <20250824-b4-pks-history-builtin-v2-5-964ac12f65bd@pks.im>

Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks.im> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> The function `write_in_core_index_as_tree()` takes a repository and
> writes its index into a tree object. What this function cannot do though
> is to take an _arbitrary_ in-memory index.
>
> Introduce a new `struct index_state` parameter so that the caller can
> pass a different index than the one belonging to the repository. This
> will be used in a subsequent commit.

Nice.

I wonder if this would also allow us to simplify the code paths for "git commit -o <pathspec>", where we use a separate temporary index that gets populated afresh from HEAD, grab the new snapshot for the paths that match the pathspec, and write it out as a tree to be wrapped in the new commit (and then the real index is also updated at these same paths).

I guess the code paths need to expose what is in the temporary index to hooks, which means the index file needs to be written out to an actual on-disk file, so the picture would be a bit different?