Lesson 38 · The status report

The status report

status runs the classification over every path, index and working tree together, and reports each in sorted order. Today you assemble the full report, the last command before the capstone.

The goal

Classify every path across the index and working tree into a sorted status report.

Start here - the target

TO DO

Scenario: status reports every path with its state

Givenan index of hello.txt, README.md, and src/main.go, a working tree where hello.txt now reads hello world and a newline, README.md and src/main.go are unchanged, and a new untracked notes.txt exists

WhenStatus() classifies the union of index paths and working files, sorted by path

Thenit reports README.md unchanged, hello.txt modified, notes.txt added, and src/main.go unchanged

Andthe entries are ordered by path (README.md, hello.txt, notes.txt, src/main.go) and every path appears exactly once

Background

status is the classification from the last two lessons applied to every path. Gather the union of the paths the index knows and the files present in the working tree (skipping the .mygit directory itself), classify each as unchanged, modified, added, or deleted, and sort by path so the report is stable. That stable ordering is what makes the output testable and readable.

This is a deliberately simplified status: real Git also distinguishes staged from unstaged changes by comparing three layers (HEAD, index, and working tree), whereas we compare two (index and working tree). But the core idea, that content-addressed ids make change detection a matter of comparing fingerprints, is exactly Git’s. With status done, every everyday command has a working core, and the capstone can drive them all together.

Make it work

// union of index paths and working files; classify each; sort by path
type StatusEntry struct{ Path, State string }
func (r *Repo) Status(ix *Index) ([]StatusEntry, error) {
  // gather paths from the index and by walking the working tree,
  // dedupe, classify each with the rules from the last two lessons, sort
}

CheckpointDONE

You have a working status command. Commit and stop here. Compare against git status on the same edits.