Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 00/14] Officially start moving to the term 'staging area'

From: Matthieu Moy <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 11:46:12 +0200

I'm lacking time to read and answer in detail, sorry.

Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]> writes:

> "It must be done" is different from "any change is good, as long as
> it introduces more instances of word 'stage'".

I agree. Something must be done, at least to remove the cache Vs index
confusion. I'm not sure exactly what's best, and we should agree where
to go before going there. The previous attempts to introduce more
"stage" in Git's command-line (e.g. the "git stage" alias) introduced
more confusion than anything else.

> The phrase "staging area" is not an everyday phrase or common CS
> lingo, and that unfortunately makes it a suboptimal choice of words
> especially to those of us, to whom a large portion of their exposure
> to the English language is through the command words we use when we
> talk to our computers.

I do not think being understandable immediately by non-native is so
important actually. To me as a french, "commit" makes no sense as an
english word to describe what "git commit" does, but it's OK as I never
really translate it. Even fr.po translates "a commit" by "un commit".

That said, having something that immediately makes sense to a non-native
is obviously a good point.

Another proposal which I liked BTW was to use the word "precommit".
Short, and easily understood as the place where the next commit is
prepared.

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/