[jordigh]

The staging area is really an extraneous concept that isn't required. It's like a commit that isn't a commit.

In Mercurial, I much prefer to just make it an actual commit in the draft phase (the default phase) and just keep rewriting that commit. Mercurial provides tools for both selectively adding and removing hunks from a commit (both `hg amend` and `hg uncommit` accept --interactive for hunk selection). If you're extra paranoid, you can make it a commit in the secret phase so it's not shared prematurely by accident.

It's pretty much functionally equivalent and doesn't require an extra location in which your code can be. It's either in your working directory or in a commit.

A bonus of this approach is that now you have a meta-history, hidden by default, of what you've "staged" and "unstaged". It's kind of like a reflog but with, in my opinion, a better UI. And of course, the index/cache/staging area in git doesn't use refs, so there's no reflog there.