Subject: Re: git status always modifies index?

From: Jeff King <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2017 17:06:27 -0500

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 01:56:35PM -0800, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

> Jeff King wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 12:27:20PM -0800, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> 
> >> That said, I wonder if this use case is an illustration that a name
> >> like --no-lock-index (as was used in Git for Windows when this feature
> >> first appeared) or --no-refresh-on-disk-index (sorry, I am terrible at
> >> coming up with option names) would make the feature easier to
> >> discover.
> [...]
> >         Or maybe just living with the minor philosophical rough edges,
> > since it seems OK in practice.
> 
> To be clear, my concern is not philosophical but practical: I'm saying
> if it's a "git status" option (or at least shows up in the "git
> status" manpage) and it is memorably about $GIT_DIR/index (at least
> mentions that in its description) then it is more likely to help
> people.

Right, I went a little off track of your original point.

What I was trying to get at is that naming it "status --no-lock-index"
would not be the same thing (even though with the current implementation
it would behave the same). IOW, can we improve the documentation of
"status" to point to make it easier to discover this use case.

-Peff