I dug through the Git mailing list, and lo and behold, the whole project used to be called "dir-cache", and was initially intended as a local cache over any arb

I dug through the Git mailing list, and lo and behold, the whole project used to be called "dir-cache", and was initially intended as a local cache over any arbitrary slow version control systems[1]. It looks like this is where the cache terminology lingers from, but the index already had its current name by the time Linus released the git source code. It seems like there was an effort to clean up the terminology pre-1.0[2], but obviously some things were missed. [1]: https://lore.kernel.org/git/Pine.LNX.4.58.0508051104510.3258@g5.osdl.org/ https://lore.kernel.org/git/Pine.LNX.4.58.0508051104510.3258... [2]: https://lore.kernel.org/git/200509020150.j821oXXM006699@laptop11.inf.utfsm.cl/ https://lore.kernel.org/git/200509020150.j821oXXM006699@lapt...