Re: 'git status' is not read-only fs friendly

From: Nicolas Pitre <nico@cam.org>
To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>,
	Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>,
	Marco Costalba <mcostalba@gmail.com>,
	GIT list <git@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: 'git status' is not read-only fs friendly
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 13:51:08 -0500 (EST)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0702101329320.1757@xanadu.home> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0702100913020.8424@woody.linux-foundation.org>

On Sat, 10 Feb 2007, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> It is *not* a read-only operation. The index is too important to be 
> considered "just a technical issue". 

There is just a semantic issue that you seem to overlook completely.

According to the dictionarry, "status" is a synonym to a "state".  It is 
_not_ an action.

So, from a _user_ perspective, the git-status command should give back a 
"status".  Of _course_ the user will benefit from the index updating 
business, but as important as this update might be (and I do agree that 
it is fundamental for GIT's performance), this is still a by-product of 
the "status" command.

Therefore, the fact that the index isn't writable should not prevent 
git-status from providing the very result for which its name was chosen.  
The index might as well be brought up to date on disk the next time the 
file system is writable.

Nicolas