Re: Why does git diff-index show intent-to-add file as "Added"?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 18, 2020, 20:07 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqo8kz70xv.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <55ed2ace-5dfd-55f9-d9a6-da71ff795716@gmail.com>

Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com> writes:

Show 12 quoted lines

>> I think it may be sensible for the command to behave as if the i-t-a
>> path does not even exist in the index when it is run with "--cached";
>> I may be missing some subtleties that require us to do something
>> different, but that is what I would think.
>
> If a user runs `add -N file` then if they run `git reset -p` (which
> runs `git diff-index --cached HEAD`) it will ask them if they want to
> remove `file` from the index. If `diff-index --cached` hid i-t-a
> entries we'd lose that or have to get the i-t-a entries another
> way. Having said that it does seem strange for `diff-index --cached`
> to be showing i-t-a entries. Perhaps `diff-index --cached` should
> default to --ita-invisible-in-index?

It probably is a good idea to consider if the implementation of `git reset -p` is doing a sensible thing, or relying on a buggy behaviour of "diff-index --cached" (worse yet, broken "diff-index --cached" to suit its needs) and see if it can be written differently.