From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
To: Pete Harlan <pgit@pcharlan.com>
Cc: Piotr Krukowiecki <piotr.krukowiecki.news@gmail.com>,
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>,
git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Consistent terminology: cached/staged/index
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 03:00:09 -0600 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20110215090009.GA22498@elie> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <4D5A3964.9090209@pcharlan.com>
Hi Pete,
Pete Harlan wrote:
> Part of the issue could be that one intimately familiar with Git's
> internals may find a process oriented interface irritating ("Why must
> it say 'staging area' when it's just updating the index?")
No, no. I agree there's a problem to solve here. The current
documentation for git (e.g., the user manual) has a nice, coherent,
user-oriented narrative about trees, commits, and blobs, and meanwhile
it is hard to find a clear story about the index.
Such a story would have to describe the conflict resolution process.
When you encounter a merge conflict, how do you resolve it? The best
I can do for now is to point to the user manual[1].
http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user-manual.html#conflict-resolution
I even think it is okay to say "The index is a sort of staging area
for your next commit". Because that is true. But it is not the full
story, so if one wants to give the index a new name --- which is a
costly thing to do, anyway --- then I do not think "the staging area"
works.
I feel bad to only be presenting complications instead of an alternate
solution. I do consider workflow oriented explanations very useful.
I've been giving technical explanations in this thread as background
for future storytelling, in the hope that someone more talented than I
am can digest it into a good narrative.
Jonathan
[1] Maybe the process is overdesigned. After all, what would we lose
by saying
- an unmerged path justs gets an "unmerged" flag set, meaning that
flag is not ready for commit yet
- to get the copy from the common ancestor, use
git show $(git merge-base HEAD MERGE_HEAD):path/to/file
- to get the copy from HEAD, use
git show HEAD:path/to/file
- likewise to get the copy from MERGE_HEAD
And while I can give answers about why that is a bad interface
(recomputing the merge base is a waste of time; in a recursive merge
the merge base is not a real commit; if there were renames, the copy
from HEAD could be HEAD:other/path and it is hard to find what
other/path is), are those answers enough to justify learning this new
trick?
So we need a better story.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2011-02-15 9:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 65+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2011-02-13 19:20 Consistent terminology: cached/staged/index Piotr Krukowiecki
2011-02-13 19:37 ` Jonathan Nieder
2011-02-13 22:58 ` Junio C Hamano
2011-02-14 2:05 ` Miles Bader
2011-02-14 5:57 ` Junio C Hamano
2011-02-14 6:27 ` Miles Bader
2011-02-14 6:59 ` Johannes Sixt
2011-02-14 7:07 ` Miles Bader
2011-02-14 10:42 ` Michael J Gruber
2011-02-14 11:04 ` Miles Bader
2011-02-14 17:12 ` Junio C Hamano
2011-02-14 22:07 ` Miles Bader
2011-02-14 22:59 ` Junio C Hamano
2011-02-14 23:47 ` Miles Bader
2011-02-15 0:12 ` Junio C Hamano
2011-02-14 13:14 ` Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy
2011-02-14 13:43 ` Michael J Gruber
2011-02-14 13:57 ` Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy
2011-02-14 14:17 ` Felipe Contreras
2011-02-14 14:21 ` Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy
2011-02-14 14:40 ` Jakub Narebski
2011-02-14 15:24 ` Michael J Gruber
2011-02-14 16:00 ` Felipe Contreras
2011-02-14 16:04 ` Michael J Gruber
2011-02-14 16:27 ` Felipe Contreras
2011-02-14 3:09 ` Pete Harlan
2011-02-16 23:11 ` Drew Northup
2011-02-26 20:36 ` Felipe Contreras
2011-02-27 15:30 ` Drew Northup
2011-02-27 21:16 ` Aghiles
2011-02-28 20:53 ` Drew Northup
2011-02-14 22:32 ` Piotr Krukowiecki
2011-02-14 23:19 ` Jonathan Nieder
2011-02-15 8:29 ` Pete Harlan
2011-02-15 9:00 ` Jonathan Nieder [this message]
2011-02-15 18:15 ` Piotr Krukowiecki
2011-02-15 18:38 ` Jonathan Nieder
2011-02-26 21:09 ` Felipe Contreras
2011-02-26 21:51 ` Jonathan Nieder
2011-02-27 0:01 ` Miles Bader
2011-02-27 0:16 ` Felipe Contreras
2011-02-27 0:46 ` Jonathan Nieder
2011-02-27 8:15 ` Junio C Hamano
2011-02-27 8:43 ` Jeff King
2011-02-27 9:21 ` Miles Bader
2011-02-27 22:28 ` Jon Seymour
2011-02-27 23:57 ` Junio C Hamano
2011-02-28 9:38 ` Michael J Gruber
2011-02-27 15:34 ` Drew Northup
2011-02-28 23:03 ` Jeff King
2011-03-01 9:11 ` David
2011-03-01 9:15 ` Matthieu Moy
2011-03-01 9:32 ` Alexei Sholik
2011-03-01 17:02 ` Drew Northup
2011-03-01 17:30 ` Alexei Sholik
2011-03-01 17:41 ` Drew Northup
2011-03-01 9:27 ` Alexey Feldgendler
2011-03-01 16:46 ` Drew Northup
2011-03-04 17:18 ` Felipe Contreras
2011-03-05 4:53 ` Miles Bader
2011-03-05 5:00 ` Jonathan Nieder
2011-03-06 12:44 ` Drew Northup
[not found] ` <878466.93199.1298934204331.JavaMail.trustmail@mail1.terreactive.ch>
2011-03-01 8:43 ` Victor Engmark
2011-02-27 18:46 ` Phil Hord
2011-03-01 10:29 ` Jonathan Nieder
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