# Why git shows staging area to users? 6 messages from 2012-10-13 to 2012-10-14. Participants: Yi, EungJun, Felipe Contreras, David Aguilar, Sitaram Chamarty, Junio C Hamano, Matthieu Moy. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/31804 ## Yi, EungJun, 2012-10-13 21:08 Subject: Why git shows staging area to users? Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CAFT%2BTg-g6KOs3YUKV_GWbZiO9qUG3LP8-T3Tdyd3LinnheQZ8A%40mail.gmail.com ``` Hi, all. Why git shows staging area to users, compared with the other scms hide it? What benefits users get? I feel staging area is useful, but it is difficult to explain why when someone asks me about that. Thanks. ``` ## Felipe Contreras, 2012-10-14 00:06 Subject: Re: Why git shows staging area to users? Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CAMP44s2d_3rciA2QTy5vn0yNXEER90-y1Q_x8sn7%2B2mVJ2eoBA%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: ``` On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 11:08 PM, Yi, EungJun wrote: > I feel staging area is useful, but it is difficult to explain why when > someone asks me about that. I agree. There has been a lot of discussions about how to improve the UI to make it more user-friendly. Maybe sometime. -- Felipe Contreras ``` ## David Aguilar, 2012-10-14 00:56 Subject: Re: Why git shows staging area to users? Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CAJDDKr7tUJ59jYDM-jhFnGMEB18taT7FsTJ24Hr%3DiBUgXXeYdg%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: ``` On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Yi, EungJun wrote: > Hi, all. > > Why git shows staging area to users, compared with the other scms hide > it? What benefits users get? http://thkoch2001.github.com/whygitisbetter/#the-staging-area http://tomayko.com/writings/the-thing-about-git http://gitready.com/beginner/2009/01/18/the-staging-area.html Other scms do not "hide"; other scms lack this feature altogether. > I feel staging area is useful, but it is difficult to explain why when > someone asks me about that. See above. -- David ``` ## Sitaram Chamarty, 2012-10-14 02:09 Subject: Re: Why git shows staging area to users? Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CAMK1S_hLDabfANbjrWEF6ZND7OZkAxxpGEeKdv2-3B5pmjiU1g%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: ``` On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 2:38 AM, Yi, EungJun wrote: > Hi, all. > > Why git shows staging area to users, compared with the other scms hide > it? What benefits users get? > > I feel staging area is useful, but it is difficult to explain why when > someone asks me about that. I wrote this a long time ago, more for my understanding than otherwise, but maybe it is useful: http://sitaramc.github.com/concepts/uses-of-index.html ``` ## Junio C Hamano, 2012-10-14 04:38 Subject: Re: Why git shows staging area to users? Message-ID: <7vtxtx1xe8.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/7vtxtx1xe8.fsf%40alter.siamese.dyndns.org In-Reply-To: ``` David Aguilar writes: > On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Yi, EungJun wrote: >> Hi, all. >> >> Why git shows staging area to users, compared with the other scms hide >> it? What benefits users get? > > http://thkoch2001.github.com/whygitisbetter/#the-staging-area > http://tomayko.com/writings/the-thing-about-git > http://gitready.com/beginner/2009/01/18/the-staging-area.html > > Other scms do not "hide"; other scms lack this feature altogether. > >> I feel staging area is useful, but it is difficult to explain why when >> someone asks me about that. > > See above. Very well said. Thanks. ``` ## Matthieu Moy, 2012-10-14 17:16 Subject: Re: Why git shows staging area to users? Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/vpqr4p1as8l.fsf%40grenoble-inp.fr In-Reply-To: ``` David Aguilar writes: > On Sat, Oct 13, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Yi, EungJun wrote: >> Hi, all. >> >> Why git shows staging area to users, compared with the other scms hide >> it? What benefits users get? > > http://thkoch2001.github.com/whygitisbetter/#the-staging-area > http://tomayko.com/writings/the-thing-about-git > http://gitready.com/beginner/2009/01/18/the-staging-area.html > > Other scms do not "hide"; other scms lack this feature altogether. More precisely: there are several things in what git calls "the index" or "the staging area" (i.e. .git/index): 1) a list of files tracked by Git 2) a record of the last known meta-data of the file, used to avoid re-reading unmodified files content each time one runs "diff", "commit" or so. 3) a record of the file's staged *content* (possible several records in case a merge is going on) Any decent revision control has the equivalent of 1) and 2), but AFAIK, 3) is a unique feature of Git. There is a frequent confusion between 2) and 3) that leads to people (often other revision-control users/developers) wonder why this is visible to the user. 2) is a performance optimization that can be hidden to the user (it is with Git's porcelain commands), but 3) is user-visible. -- Matthieu Moy http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/ ```