GiT

The index

or staging, or cache

The index

What is it?

The Index is your proposed next commit

https://git-scm.com/

The index

What is the point?

Isn't git commit -a enough?

The index

What is the point?

Prepare commits

Make sure they contain only what is needed

Separate commits per subtask/change

Prevents committing undesirable changes (debug, local configuration...)

The index

How to use it?

your new best friend:

git add 

The index

How to see changes?

git diff
git diff --cached

git diff --staged

The index

Go forward

Git does not work with files, but with changes... And so do developers!

How to stage changes instead of files?

The index

Go forward

• Good practice to do small and atomic commit
• How to do so and add what we need only without disturbing the coding flow?

The index

git add --patch

git add --interactive

The reason why git add is your new best friend

Depending on the nature of a change, its impact and the way it is reviewed is different

• comment, indentation have no logical impact,
• refactor,
• bugfix,
• new feature,
• ...

Depending on the code, its impact and the way it is reviewed is different

Having different types of changes in a changeset makes it difficult to understand them properly 

Is every committed changes what the developer wanted to commit (extra lines, debug, unused code...)?

The index

git add --patch

Pros:

• Makes commit cleaner
• The branch becomes easier to review and debug
• Having targeted commits adds some extra documentation with their message
• Makes the code being more reviewed
• Helps spotting unwanted changes

The index

git add --patch

Whatever we well understand we express clearly, and words flow with ease.

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux

Questions?

References

• http://ghislain-rodrigues.fr/articles/git-add---interactive.html
• http://gitolite.com/uses-of-index.html