On: Why Git Is Hard

[bornfreddy]

> A commit is not a snapshot and a patch. It is literally only a snapshot.

When you do cherry-pick, you supply a commit id, but actually a patch (diff between the commit and its parent) is applied. So yes, commit (/id) can mean a patch in some cases.

[IshKebab → bornfreddy]

No. The operation involves diffing snapshots to make a patch and then applying that patch. But a commit is still only ever a snapshot.

Like, is an ordinary file a patch? No of course not. But you can still turn it into a patch by diffing two files.

In the same way a commit is just a set of files. But you can turn it into a patch by diffing two commits.

> commit (/id) can mean a patch in some cases.

It doesn't. It means "which snapshot would you like me to turn into a patch by diffing with its parent snapshot?"