Re: Consistent terminology: cached/staged/index

[Drew Northup <drew.northup@maine.edu>]

On Tue, 2011-03-01 at 11:32 +0200, Alexei Sholik wrote:

> I guess, people who are friendly with git using the word "index"
> because it's easier to type. But it confuses an unprepared reader. The
> solution of the problem with confusion must be relevant to these
> points:
>  - clarify that "index" means the same thing as the "staging area" (in
> man if it isn't there already?)

Alas, this isn't quite true. Blobs are copied to the .git/objects
directory (which I referred to earlier as an object store without proper
qualification) with each "git add" action AND are noted in the Index at
the same time. Therefore the Index is quite literally containing
information about the blobs to be committed without containing the blobs
themselves. This is why I find any specific equivalence between Index
and "staging area" distasteful--it is misleading. 

(Yes, I made that mistake as well--helped along by a lot of third-party
documentation referring to a specific cache or a specific "staging area"
without noting that those were tools to understand the logical function
of git but did not have anything to do with implementation. When you
claim to be explaining "how something works" you should be doing just
that.)

-- 
-Drew Northup
________________________________________________
"As opposed to vegetable or mineral error?"
-John Pescatore, SANS NewsBites Vol. 12 Num. 59