Re: [PATCH] git-diff: Add --staged as a synonym for --cached.

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Björn Steinbrink <B.Steinbrink@gmx.de> writes:

> Looking at --cached/--index we have basically three things:
>
>   --cached to refer to the state of the index (diff, grep, [stash], ...)
>   --cached to _work on_ the index only (rm, apply, ...)
>   --index to _work on_ both the index and the working tree (apply, ...)

I think the earlier two are the same thing.  The only difference between
them is that in the first one, the definition of your "work on" happens to
be a read-only operation.  Am I mistaken?

> A quick look through Documentation/ revealed only one problematic case,
> which is ls-files that already has a --stage option. And that looks like
> a dealbreaker :-(

'ls-files' is primarily about the index contents and all else is a fluff
;-)

You could say --show-stage-too if you wanted to, but the command is a
plumbing to begin with, so perhaps if we can identify the cases where
people need to use the command and enhance some Porcelain (likely
candidate is 'status' or perhaps 'status --short') to give the information
people use ls-files for, we hopefully wouldn't have to change ls-files
itself at all.

The only case I use ls-files these days when I am _using_ git (as opposed
to developing/debugging git) is "git ls-files -u" to get the list of still
unmerged paths during a conflicted merge.