Re: way to automatically add untracked files?

From: Steffen Prohaska <prohaska@zib.de>
Date: Aug 5, 2007, 11:22 UTC
Message-ID: <8EA2C4F4-F947-427B-A1E8-ABAEB06C1360@zib.de>
In-Reply-To: <7v4pjeioi6.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>

On Aug 5, 2007, at 6:39 AM, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

>
> Adding _new_ files, unless you are just beginning a new project,
> are much more rare than updating modified files that you are
> already tracking; and "git add new-file..." is what people
> usually use for the former.  "git add ." is almost always the
> "initial import" and not used later (after all you ought to know
> what files you are creating and controlling ;-)).  You get into
> an illusion that that is often used, only when you have just
> started.  As your project progresses, that feeling will fade
> away.

I exactly need the functionality that Miles is describing for the following good reason:

Mac OS X has the notion of a bundle, which is a directory that contains related files that are fully controlled by the application that is writing that bundle. The bundle functionality is directly supported by the OS and most applications save their data as bundles. For example on Mac OS X, the Openoffice format, which packs related files in a zip file, would just be a directory with all related files grouped together (no ZIP archive needed).

So here is what I need: I want to be able to track a directory with all its contents. The data inside the directory are not under my control. It's only the directory that matters for me.

Git is already quite good at that because it doesn't need to place anything inside the opaque directory! Subversion for example has no chance because it clutters the directory with .svn directories, which will be removed by the next Save (an application first creates a new temporary directory, stores all data there, moves the old directory to a backup location, and renames the new directory to the final destination only if no problems occurred).

When I started with git I figured out that

    git-ls-files -z --others dir | git-update-index --add -z --stdin
    git commit -a

does the job for me. Would

    git add dir
    git add -u dir
    git commit

be equivalent, but restricted to the changes in dir?

	Steffen