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From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
To: Michael J Gruber <git@grubix.eu>
Cc: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>,
	Bagas Sanjaya <bagasdotme@gmail.com>,
	Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>,
	git@vger.kernel.org, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>,
	Matthieu Moy <git@matthieu-moy.fr>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 6/7] stage: add 'diff' subcommand
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2021 16:40:53 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <YRQ11bYH5lV9D24D@coredump.intra.peff.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <162871314612.7067.6886805754107701040.git@grubix.eu>

On Wed, Aug 11, 2021 at 10:19:06PM +0200, Michael J Gruber wrote:

> > > It is a good example that illustrates that the proposed organization
> > > may not help learning or using the system for operations that also
> > > apply to other things like commit and working tree (in other words,
> > > "git stage --grep" may not be such a good idea for the same reason
> > > as "git stage --diff").  But if it were limited to operations that
> > > apply only to the index (e.g. "git add" and "git rm"), it may be an
> > > improvement (I think we added "git stage" synonym exactly for that
> > > reason, already).
> > 
> > One thing I find off-putting about "git stage --diff" is that to me,
> > "stage" reads as a verb. So it is like "git add --diff", which seems
> > out-of-place; there are two verbs in a row.
> > 
> > I do not mind the term "staging area", but using "the stage" as a noun
> > is simply confusing to me in this context.
> 
> I think this exemplifies what I meant by discussing things in order. The
> concept "staging area" works in teaching and explaining things. But
> that does not imply that a "stage command" is the best way to convey
> that concept in the UI.

Yeah, I agree very much that saying "the term staging area makes sense"
does not imply that the "stage command" is a good idea.

> I mean, so much of git is about operating on or comparing between three
> different types of "sources": the working tree, the index, a treeish. A
> lot of confusion comes from the fact that we hide this behind different
> commands to act on them and different ways to specify these conceptual
> items:
> - You specify a treeish as an argument to a command.
> - You specify the index as an option (--cached, --staged) or by choosing
>   the right command.
> - You specify the working tree as an option (--worktree) or by choosing
>   the right command (checkout vs. reset) or number of options (diff).
> 
> Newer commands like "restore" try to help but fail badly when e.g. "restore
> --staged" means you overwrite what is staged with something from a
> treeish.

Agreed. At one point[1] I half-proposed a "git put" command that would
move changes between those three places (and giving a concrete name for
the index and working tree so they could be specified as sources or
destinations).

I do still like it as a conceptual model, but IIRC it gets hairy in some
of the details (e.g., "checkout -p HEAD" is still using the index as an
intermediary).

> I still think it's very worthwhile to fantasize about a git which has
> only verb-like commands (such as diff, add, checkout, checkin) and a
> consistent way of specifying the objects to act upon (possibly amended
> by "git pluralnoun" being synonymous to "git ls noun" or similar
> convenience shortcuts).

I don't really disagree with anything in your post, but I do think a
pure-verb world would be tricky in some ways. Or at least verbose. We
have "git branch --delete". But "git delete" seems a little too
open-ended. The concept of that verb is meaningful only in the context
or a particular noun. We could call it "git delete-branch", but that
doesn't really seem to make the world a better place. :)

-Peff

  reply	other threads:[~2021-08-11 20:40 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 24+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-08-11  4:57 [PATCH 0/7] [un]stage: officially start moving to "staging area" Felipe Contreras
2021-08-11  4:57 ` [PATCH 1/7] stage: add proper 'stage' command Felipe Contreras
2021-08-11  4:57 ` [PATCH 2/7] stage: add helper to run commands Felipe Contreras
2021-08-11  4:57 ` [PATCH 3/7] stage: add 'add' subcommand Felipe Contreras
2021-08-11  4:57 ` [PATCH 4/7] stage: add 'remove' subcommand Felipe Contreras
2021-08-11  4:57 ` [PATCH 5/7] unstage: add 'unstage' command Felipe Contreras
2021-08-11  4:57 ` [PATCH 6/7] stage: add 'diff' subcommand Felipe Contreras
2021-08-11  6:12   ` Bagas Sanjaya
2021-08-11  7:24     ` Felipe Contreras
2021-08-11 16:00     ` Junio C Hamano
2021-08-11 17:17       ` Felipe Contreras
2021-08-11 19:06       ` Jeff King
2021-08-11 20:18         ` Felipe Contreras
2021-08-11 20:30           ` Jeff King
2021-08-11 21:24             ` Felipe Contreras
2021-08-11 20:19         ` Michael J Gruber
2021-08-11 20:40           ` Jeff King [this message]
2021-08-11 20:51             ` Michael J Gruber
2021-08-11 21:02             ` Jeff King
2021-08-11 20:57           ` Junio C Hamano
2021-08-11 21:40           ` Felipe Contreras
2021-08-11  4:57 ` [PATCH 7/7] stage: add 'edit' command Felipe Contreras
2021-08-11 10:44 ` [PATCH 0/7] [un]stage: officially start moving to "staging area" Michael J Gruber
2021-08-11 16:55   ` Felipe Contreras

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