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The ”staging” concept in git is something that I know really bugs a lot of people, especially beginners with git. Like ”I just want to commit, why is there this

by OskarS 2y ago

The ”staging” concept in git is something that I know really bugs a lot of people, especially beginners with git. Like ”I just want to commit, why is there this extra step?”, but I totally agree with you. Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome, but I really like that there’s an extra “look through your changes” procedure before committing, exactly for reasons like this.

wbkang 2y ago
It sounds like Stockholm to me ;) I don't think you _need_ the index to make partial commit work. I've used Mercurial first so I know "hg commit -i" exists. Even if the staging concept is clear to someone, git cli terminology _is_ objectively very confusing and there are many articles written about it already (e.g., do I "add" to index? Is the index also referred as cached/Staged? Mixing different verbs and nouns everywhere). Are they all the same?) I just wrote this to say it is not a necessary part of making a tool as powerful as git - Mercurial shows an example of a similar tool with a less confusing CLI. Of course, git won so I just live with it. I enjoy teaching git new devs because once you explain the confusing terminology up front, they understand it faster.
pragma_x 2y ago
> an extra “look through your changes” procedure A lot of the time, when I do my best to blow past that step, I forget to add new files to the commit. I wind up with all this needless CI activity on push, publish a whole PR for others to see, and generally waste everyone's time. Git's workflow really is based on this whole corpus of shared VCS experience, and it shows. The downside to all that is that Git is _everyone's_ workflow, and nobody's at the same time. It's a compromise, and the tool does expose everyone to all the small little steps that are a part of that bigger experience. That said, if there was a more succinct workflow that was smart enough to flag simple mistakes for me, I would welcome it.

by OskarS 2y ago

wbkang 2y ago

It sounds like Stockholm to me ;) I don't think you _need_ the index to make partial commit work. I've used Mercurial first so I know "hg commit -i" exists. Even if the staging concept is clear to someone, git cli terminology _is_ objectively very confusing and there are many articles written about it already (e.g., do I "add" to index? Is the index also referred as cached/Staged? Mixing different verbs and nouns everywhere). Are they all the same?) I just wrote this to say it is not a necessary part of making a tool as powerful as git - Mercurial shows an example of a similar tool with a less confusing CLI. Of course, git won so I just live with it. I enjoy teaching git new devs because once you explain the confusing terminology up front, they understand it faster.

pragma_x 2y ago

> an extra “look through your changes” procedure A lot of the time, when I do my best to blow past that step, I forget to add new files to the commit. I wind up with all this needless CI activity on push, publish a whole PR for others to see, and generally waste everyone's time. Git's workflow really is based on this whole corpus of shared VCS experience, and it shows. The downside to all that is that Git is _everyone's_ workflow, and nobody's at the same time. It's a compromise, and the tool does expose everyone to all the small little steps that are a part of that bigger experience. That said, if there was a more succinct workflow that was smart enough to flag simple mistakes for me, I would welcome it.