Re: [PATCH] doc: Modify git-add doc to say "staging area"

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

"David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com> writes:

> On December 14, 2017 1:50:00 PM EST, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>>I agree with that.  I do not consider the proposed change "good".
>
> Why is "index" better? It is a confusing name, one that has many
> other unrelated meanings.  In particular, many projects managed by
> git also have an index, but few have a staging area.

That's an absurd argument.  A database product that wants to be used
in library systems are forbidden to have "index" because that may be
confused with library index cards?

> Also, the phrase "staging area" is already in use, so this is not
> a new term (e.g., git-staging).

That gets us back to the "'X acts like Y' is different from 'X is
Y'".  

Besides, the phrase "staging area" is a near-sighted and narrow
minded term.  It focuses too much on working towards the next
commit, and ignores there are other aspects that are equally
important.  When you check out historical revisions (without any
intention of making new commits, just sightseeing), for example, the
index does not act as "staging area" for creating a new commit.  But
it still serves Git users by keeping track of the list of paths that
came from the HEAD, and recording their contents and the cached stat
info for the working tree files (all using the pathnames as keys
into these data items).