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by ufo 1961 days ago
One thing I prefer about Mercurial is that it doesn't have a separate staging area. To create a new commit in git you need to run `git add` followed by `git commit`. In Mercurial it's just `hg commit`. Furthermore, if you want to look at the diff in git sometimes it's `git diff` and sometimes you need to run `git diff --cached`.

Now, I'm sure there are antsy git users in this forum ready to reply about how great the staging area is because of `git add -p`. I would note that you can also do those things in Hg if you want. For example, the `shelve` command in Hg is analogous to `git stash -p`. If you want to commit only part of the changes you can shelve away the things that you don't want to commit for now. One thing I like about this workflow compared to the staging area is that if you run your test suite, the code that is being tested in your working directory is the same one that will be commited.
2 comments
acdha 1961 days ago
> To create a new commit in git you need to run `git add` followed by `git commit`.

Or `git commit -a` — and if you're making commits that frequently it'll be in your shell history anyway.

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lmm 1961 days ago
Except that if you added a new file then "git commit -a" will miss it out.

Git's UI is full of little sharp edges like that. You get used to them, but it's just needlessly fiddly to start with.

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acdha 1961 days ago
> Except that if you added a new file then "git commit -a" will miss it out.

Exactly like Mercurial, you mean? Try it if you haven't in a while: you have to call “hg add” to add a new file or you'll get “nothing changed” when you run "hg commit".

The reason why neither of them has a default “add everything in the current directory” mode is that this is how you end up with repositories containing temporary files, build artifacts, and secrets.

This is not a good example to base ”much better UI” claims on.

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folkrav 1961 days ago
So everything that you modified since last commit will get committed regardless? I can't add logging to some file or manually override a config without it getting it committed as there is no staging? Doesn't sound like much of a selling point, unless I'm misunderstanding...
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