Re: Apologia for bzr

[Yuri Khan]

On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> If you don't already know what is "staging", you will never understand
> that this is one of the most important and useful options.  Also,
> "haven't told Git about new files" fails to mention "git add".  Once
> I've managed to grasp all that, I've made an alias for "commit -a",
> because that's what I almost always want.  (And why isn't that the
> default, dammit?)

Because staging is a key concept in git and it enables a whole lot of
useful workflows. E.g. you can work all day and half the next day on a
feature, making small formatting changes and fix coding style
violations on your way as you spot them, then fire up a commit tool
and make three commits, one for trivial formatting changes, another
for coding style fixes, and a third one with the feature you actually
worked on.

Without staging, you would have to look at the diff, back up and
revert some changes so that the working directory looks the way you
want for one commit, then the other, then the next one. Or you would
hold off fixing small things until you have committed the feature, and
risk forgetting to do them.