[bicolao]

> I would like an option to make the index go away

By Git design, you will have to face the index when you have merge conflicts. I don't know how to avoid that (and now is not the time for fundamentally change how conflict resolution is done).

But yeah, the other times, I think you can just live just fine without knowing or touching the index.

> I can't test the index.

I'm not trying to convince you to use the index. But to me, the way I test the index is commit it. Then I could use "rebase -i" to revisit the old commits (i.e. the index content) and test or make more fixes if needed.