> Git’s workflow wouldn’t even be sane without the staging area. This is what allows you to fix mistakes and make your work presentable for remotes.
I did exactly the same diff/tidy/diff workflow when I used p4 and svn, neither of which make a distinction between "working directory" and "staging area".
Right, but p4 & svn have “checkout” which is similar to staging. Staging is part of what we get because we can edit files without having to checkout / open for edit.
P4 and svn don’t have a strict commit parentage, which is why you can push commits in those systems in any order. Git’s strict concept of parentage is what makes the staging area so important for keeping your workflow similar to p4 & svn Workflows. Without a staging area, you’d either have to always fix mistakes with new commits, which is bad, or rewrite already pushed history, which is worse.
The terminology is a bit different - unless configured with mandatory locking (essential for some workflows) you don't have to open for edit. You just edit stuff and it goes in the "default changelist", roughly equivalent to automatic staging.
> Without a staging area, you’d either have to always fix mistakes with new commits
Mistakes at what point? In the normal svn workflow you can review with svn diff, then when you're happy do svn commit; it's just that there's no local place you're committing to. In both cases there's a critical point, either "svn commit" or "git push".
> unless configured with mandatory locking ... you don’t have to open for edit.
I’d guess you’re learning toward talking about svn, which I don’t remember very well, and I am leaning towward talking about p4, which always does mandatory locking.
You’re right the terminology is different between these different systems, I’m just pointing out that the git staging area has what you can think of as some equivalences in the other systems. Or, you can think of it as tradeoffs. Either way, the git staging area is something that helps you pretend like you’re using svn or p4 in the sense that it helps support editing multiple changes at the same time before pushing them to a server.
> Mistakes at what point?
With git I’m referring to mistakes between commit and push. But there’s a philosophical difference here that I glossed over. With git it’s easier to commit early and often than it is with svn or p4. With svn & p4 it’s easier to lose your work because version control doesn’t know anything about it before you push. If I make micro-commits, which I want and I like, then I put more “mistakes” along the way into my local history, and I can use the staging area to clean everything up before I push. With svn & p4, you make those mistakes and do the cleanup without ever telling the version control, and you run a greater risk of losing that work while you do the cleanup.
Git’s workflow wouldn’t even be sane without the staging area. This is what allows you to fix mistakes and make your work presentable for remotes.