Git’s great! But it’s difficult to learn (it was for me, anyway) – especially the index, which unlike the power-user features, comes up in day-to-day operation.
Here’s my path to enlightment, and how I ended up using the index in my particular workflow. There are other workflows, but this one is mine.
The thing about Git is that it’s oddly liberal with how and when you use it. Version control systems have traditionally required a lot of up-front planning followed by constant interaction to get changes to the right place at the right time and in the right order. And woe unto thee if a rule is broken somewhere along the way, or you change your mind about something, or you just want to fix this one thing real quick before having to commit all the other crap in your working copy.
"Git Extensions is a small toolset to make working with Git under Windows a little more intuitive. The shell extension will intergrate in Windows Explorer and presents a nice context menu on files."
"A reliable versatile multipurpose revision control tool whose extraordinary flexibility makes it tricky to learn, let alone master. I'm recording what I've figured out so far in these pages, because I initially had difficulty understanding the Git user manual."