From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: "J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org>
Subject: Re: A few usability question about git diff --cached
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 11:51:47 -0400
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Cc: Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>,
	Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>,
	Miklos Vajna <vmiklos@frugalware.org>,
	Paolo Ciarrocchi <paolo.ciarrocchi@gmail.com>,
	Git Mailing List <git@vger.kernel.org>
To: Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@imag.fr>
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On Thu, Oct 04, 2007 at 04:44:00PM +0200, Matthieu Moy wrote:
> Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:
> 
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Thu, 4 Oct 2007, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> >
> >>  * --cached means work only on index and ignore work tree.
> >
> > I guess I could live with "--staged" as a synonym for "--cached" (and 
> > maybe deprecating "--cached").
> 
> It makes more sense to me.
> 
> For me, a "cache" is a fast-access copy of something, that I can
> rebuild at any time. Cache should be only a matter of performance, if
> the "cache" for an application changes its functionality, it means the
> cache has been too optimistic. Git's index is not that, "git add"
> means "add this to the index", which itself means "put that in the
> list of things to commit", and not "get a copy of that to work faster
> with it".

Yes, the index differs from the work tree or HEAD temporarily, but most
of it's life it's just a fast-access copy of something that you can
rebuild at any time.

So it's partly a "cache", partly a "staging area", and "index" is as
good a term for it as any.

--b.