[Q] Mark files for later commit?

Hi folks!

I just hit into an situation where a certain file contains a human written changelog, which is modified (not prepended) for each single commit in the project, is being committed along with the actual patch.

This approach makes it very difficult to backport the commits, since it will always try patching the changelog file as well.

The changelog is only supposed to be committed at new releases, but is kept maintained continuously so stuff won't be forgotten.

So this makes me wonder, is there a way to mark certain files for being committed later on? Which does not automatically get added to the staging area (on "git commit -a" or "git add ." and so on) unless it's specifically mentioned by "git add"?

We've discussed making it generated automatically, but that's not as easy as it may sound.

How would you like a git feature like described above, marking files for later inclusion?

Thanks! -- Daniel