The index has been a core part of Git since its inception and yet its existence and purpose are often stumbling blocks for newcomers to Git. Even people experienced with Git often struggle to separate its interface from its implementation details.
This talk aims to improve understanding of the index and to show how to take advantage of its power.
First, we’ll examine the history of Git’s index - effectively the first feature ever added to Git - to help explain why the index is the way it is. I shall look at the background and rationale behind some of the other words used for index: "cache" and "staging area".
Next, I want to examine the features of the index as it exists in Git today and to separate exactly what I think that all Git users need to understand from the benefits that the index brings to Git’s implementation which aren’t necessary for a Git beginner to be aware of.
Finally, I’ll demonstrate some index manipulation tips and trips that have practical use. These will include a look at cases where the plumbing commands such as read-tree, update-index and checkout-index can be usefully employed, use of an alternate index by defining GIT_INDEX_FILE and the performance benefits of filter-branch’s --index-filter over more mundane alternatives.
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