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regarding "git status"

Subject: regarding "git status"

## tl;dr

3 messages between May 13, 2010 and May 13, 2010.

replies: 2people: 3as markdown or json

Terrence Brannon· May 13, 2010, 13:56 UTC · lore

In the manpage for git-status (http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-status.html) it says:

"Displays paths that have differences between the index file and the current HEAD commit"

but how could something be added to the index and not be different from the current HEAD commit? shouldnt this sentence say: "displays paths that have been added to the index"

Randal L. Schwartz· May 13, 2010, 14:17 UTC · re: Terrence Brannon · lore

Re: regarding "git status"

>>>>> "Terrence" == Terrence Brannon <schemelab@gmail.com> writes:

Terrence> In the manpage for git-status Terrence> (http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-status.html) it says:

Terrence> "Displays paths that have differences between the index file Terrence> and the current HEAD commit"

Terrence> but how could something be added to the index and not be Terrence> different from the current HEAD commit? shouldnt this sentence Terrence> say: "displays paths that have been added to the index"

The HEAD commit might have changed without changing the index via something like "git reset --soft $sha1". So yes, either the index or the head might have changed, and this is reporting the differences between them.

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Matthieu Moy· May 13, 2010, 14:20 UTC · re: Terrence Brannon · lore

Re: regarding "git status"

Terrence Brannon <schemelab@gmail.com> writes:
Show 8 quoted lines
> In the manpage for git-status
> (http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-status.html) it says:
>
> "Displays paths that have differences between the index file and the current
> HEAD commit"
>
> but how could something be added to the index and not be different from the
> current HEAD commit?

The index doesn't contain the _differences_ between what you're about to commit and HEAD, it contains _all_ the content you're going to commit, i.e. if you have no new stuff to commit, it contains the same thing as HEAD (in a slightly different form: HEAD uses just the object database, while .git/index is roughly an array of files).

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