Why I don't use git's staging area as part of my normal workflow

Git has a lot of bells and whistles and there are a lot of different ways to achieve any given task. I've seen several workflow documents explaining how to use the staging area and git add --patch to only commit some of the changes in your working copy so you can keep nice clean logical commits. I love the idea of having a clean history and logical commits but I think there are some drawbacks to using the index as part of a normal workflow.

The problem with the staging area

I always want to commit working code (if possible) because I could switch to another task and I don't want to come back to broken code (or even worse - pass along broken code to a colleague). That's why I always try to commit all changes in my working copy. When you start getting fancy and using the index to commit partial changes your working copy and your index get out of sync and it's possible for your code to appear as though it's working when you are using it or running your tests but the code that you commit might not work. One thought-experiment example: it's possible to commit a new test but not the new function or method that the test is checking even though the test is passing. Whenever your tests or tools are running they are running against your working copy. Whenever you are running your code interactively you are exercising the code that is in the working copy. Your file system does not understand that you only have some chunks of your changes staged for a commit. When I want to remove in-progress or half-baked code I use (and recommend) git stash --patch. It is the opposite of git add --patch -- it removes changes interactively and creates a stash of the unfinished chunks of code. Like any other stash, the changes can be popped or applied later. Once you have removed the in-progress code you can run your tests and know that you are committing working code. Another benefit of patch stashing unfinished changes is that they become part of the immutable history which can be used as a backup for in-progress code.

There you have it. That's why I avoid the index and frequently use git stash --patch in my git workflow.