Re: Git commit won't add an untracked file given on the command line

From: Mark Burton <markb@ordern.com>
Date: Nov 19, 2008, 09:54 UTC
Message-ID: <20081119095452.3018d2de@crow>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0811190206170.30769@pacific.mpi-cbg.de>

Hi,

Show 7 quoted lines

> It may be a traditional wart, but a helpful one.  Remember, you can also 
> say:
> 
> 	git commit that/directory/
> 
> I do _not_ want Git to add all untracked (and unignored) files in that 
> directory automatically.

Yes, I can see the wisdom in not automatically adding the contents of a directory specified on the command line. So that's probably the answer to my original question.

As for "knowing what the staging area is about", I use the staging area almost all the time as I consider it one of git's major improvements over "traditional" SCM systems. I especially like how I can use tools like git gui to browse and select the changes to be staged for the next commit.

Having said that, I still like the concept of being able to add named files without touching the index.

Feature request for the git gui people:

  It would be nice if git gui was able to stage a highlighted region
  rather than either the whole hunk or just the line under the cursor
  as I believe it behaves now. I might be wrong but I don't think it
  can do that at the moment. I think that would be useful because
  although it's a step forward to be able to stage individual lines in
  a hunk, it can be laborious if you want to pick out more than just a
  couple of lines.

Cheers,

Mark