For example, let's say that you have worked on your working directory, updated
some files in the index and are ready to commit. You want to see exactly
-*what* you are going to commit is without having to write a new tree
+*what* you are going to commit, without having to write a new tree
object and compare it that way, and to do that, you just do
git-diff-index --cached HEAD
-100644 blob 4161aecc6700a2eb579e842af0b7f22b98443f74 commit.c
+100644 blob 4161aecc6700a2eb579e842af0b7f22b98443f74 git-commit.c
-You can trivially see that the above is a rename.
+You can see easily that the above is a rename.
In fact, "git-diff-index --cached" *should* always be entirely equivalent to
actually doing a "git-write-tree" and comparing that. Except this one is much
torvalds@ppc970:~/v2.6/linux> git-diff-index HEAD
*100644->100664 blob 7476bb......->000000...... kernel/sched.c
-ie it shows that the tree has changed, and that `kernel/sched.c` has is
+i.e., it shows that the tree has changed, and that `kernel/sched.c` has is
not up-to-date and may contain new stuff. The all-zero sha1 means that to
get the real diff, you need to look at the object in the working directory
directly rather than do an object-to-object diff.