Re: seperate commits for objects already updated in index?
On Tue, 14 Mar 2006, Junio C Hamano wrote:
<snip - interesting, thanks>
> It might be better to further check if the working tree file is the
> same as the index, and to allow a commit in such a case.
That would be a nice improvement.
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> The intent of rule #2 is to prevent this from happening:
>
> $ edit A B
> $ git update-index A B
> $ edit B again
> $ git commit -o B
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> When this happens, the real index will have _old_ contents of B
> that never was committed, and does not match what is in the index.
> But after the commit, we will match the real index to what was
> committed, so we will _lose_ the index entry for B before the
> second edit you explicitly told git to remember by saying
> 'update-index'.
That would indeed be annoying, and I'd obviously prefer to have to run 'git reset' than have the above happen!
However, I'd have expected that any porcelain command would synchronise index with HEAD after a commit. See below for my (still newbie-ish ;) ) user-level mental model of git.
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> On the other hand, in your original sequence:
>
> $ edit A B
> $ git update-index A B
> $ git commit -o B
>
> B being committed would be different between HEAD and index, but
> that is what we are going to commit anyway, so after this commit, B
> will be in sync with the updated HEAD.
Right. So if the file in the index and working tree are the same (hey, i just ran update-index after all), then that check could be loosened. The only thing the commit can do is bring the /3rd/ piece of the puzzle (HEAD) in sync :).
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> To put it in another way, "commit -o" is a short-hand for people
> who do not want to run update-index themselves (IOW, people who
> just want to use git without worrying about the index file). If
> you use update-index to mark "this is what I want to commit"
> yourself, you should do so consistently. If you are not ready to
> commit A but you want to commit B, do not mark both of them and
> expect "commit -o" to do magic fixups.
I guess my problem here is that I consider the index to be a 'weak' cache.
I like to use it for intermediate way-points or "weak commits", however if I commit to HEAD I /really/ want what (I consider to be) the two /strong/ sources of file information (HEAD and working file) to be synchronised, and the 'weak' cache updated then to match.
I wasn't expecting the 'weak' cache of the index to prevent me synchronising my 'strong' sources (HEAD and working file). I was expecting the 'weak' cache to be updated to the 'strong' ones.
If I want to synchronise this 'weak' cache, I'll do so explicitely (though, there isn't a user-obvious distinction in commands for this, there's no obvious "git-commit-index"). Maybe part of the problem here is that git-commit tries to hide the index/working-tree/HEAD distinction? I don't know.
Anyway, if git-commit can lift "Rule 2" where file in working tree and index match, that'd be great - but I can easily live with git-reset till then. ;)
Thanks for the informative email!
regards,
--
Paul Jakma paul@clubi.ie paul@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
A violent man will die a violent death.
-- Lao Tsu
