On 3/25/15 11:37 AM, Yuri Khan wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 12:19 AM, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> wrote:
> 
>> I'm mystified as to what the git index is for.  What's its motivation,
>> what's it used for, what does it gain me in exchange for the extra
>> complexity?  Does anybody have a link to a justification?  I'm genuinely
>> curious about this.
> 
> I view the index as a convenience.
> 
> The use case goes like this. I work on a feature. At the same time, I
> notice some coding style violations, or bad spelling/grammar, or
> possible enhancements unrelated to the feature.

Git certainly makes this pleasant (especially with `git add -p`). Back
before git I wanted the same type of features so a friend and I wrote
"commit-patch" (http://www.porkrind.org/commit-patch/). It supports a
bunch of different VCSes (including git) and integrates well with
Emacs--you basically get a diff somehow (`C-x v =` or `C-x v D` for me,
usually), edit the diff using Emacs's handy diff mode tools, then commit
that patch with `C-c C-c`. I find it's *much* easier to deal with than
magit or anything else I've seen so far, and it's heavenly to have
fine-grained commit control even when stuck with CVS and SVN.

-David