Re: Definition of "the Git repository"

[Kevin Buckley <Kevin.Buckley@pawsey.org.au>]

On 2021/06/28 13:21, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> 
> To try to make it more orthogonal, let's suppose the index file was
> outside the .git directory. Would you consider then the staging area
> separate from the repository?
> 
> In fact, we don't have to suppose:
> 
>    GIT_INDEX_FILE=/tmp/index git checkout @~ -- .
> 
> Does that command change the repository in any way?
  
I have to admit that I don't know, and that I can't immediately
see where the "repository" would be, in that example. This is
obviously a gap in my understanding: happy to defer to yours.

I do however feel that the fact that we have moved to using examples
that override the Git Index file on the command line, in order to
define what a "repository" is, just so that we might be able to give
a "more correct" definition of the term, to someone completely new to
Git, suggests that, as others have already noted in the discussion,
it's not easy to be "correct"?

Kevin