Re: [RFC/PATCH 0/2] New 'stage' command

From: Stefan Karpinski <stefan.karpinski@gmail.com>
To: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Cc: "David Kågedal" <davidk@lysator.liu.se>,
	git@vger.kernel.org, "David Aguilar" <davvid@gmail.com>,
	"Sverre Rabbelier" <srabbelier@gmail.com>,
	markus.heidelberg@web.de,
	"Felipe Contreras" <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC/PATCH 0/2] New 'stage' command
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 18:36:06 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <d4bc1a2a0904061836t295d5cf8w39500d63acfc80ab@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <7vy6ud4otd.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 11:30 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> David Kågedal <davidk@lysator.liu.se> writes:
>
>> What do you mean? This was a suggestion for how git diff should
>> work. I fail to see how you would need a WORKTREEANDTHEINDEX there.
>
> You are talking only about "git diff".  I am talking about the whole git
> suite, because you have to worry about how such a proposal would affect
> other parts of the UI.
>
> For example, what, if anything, should be done to "git grep --cached" and
> "git apply --index"?  Leave them unchanged and only change "git diff"?
>
>> I think this is a basic usability issue for a high-level porcelain
>> command such as diff.
>
> I do not think there is any usability issue.  Why do you think saying
> STAGE in all capital makes it easier to _use_ instead of saying --cached
> (or --index-only)?  In either way, you need to understand the underlying
> concept, such as:

There is most definitely a usability issue here. I use git every day
and I *cannot* for the life of me remember all the inconsistent
stage-related oddball commands. I have a number of aliases for them
(similar to what Felipe is proposing) which are the only way I can
remember them. Whenever I find myself using a git repo without those
aliases, I have to fire up the man pages. Trying to explain all of
this to coworkers that use git—honestly, I don't even try to go there.