Re: VC mode and git

[Harald Hanche-Olsen <hanche@math.ntnu.no>]

Richard Stallman wrote:
> How fragile and complicated git is.

Complicated, sure. But fragile? I am not so sure.
Apart from commands like git reset --hard, it seems very difficult to 
actually lose data with git. But it is possible to get into a state 
which is hard to get out of, as you (we all) have discovered.

Apropos of that, I have a question for the git experts out there.
If you read the glossary, you will find that the index can hold three 
versions of the same file. This happens only, I believe, with a merge 
that had conflicts. The stash, on the other hand, seems to be just a 
sort of temporary commit, where you can put things to get them out of 
the way and retrieve them afterwards.

 From this it is my guess that stashing in the middle of a merge with 
conflicts is not safe, as the stash is not capable of holding multiple 
versions of a single file. Or am I wrong about that? I have not been 
able to find out by reading the documentation, but perhaps I have been 
looking in the wrong place.

This concern is one reason I asked Richard at one point about the output 
of “git ls-tree -u”. When it turned out to be empty, I was much relieved.

– Harald