Re: git add -p with new file

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 10, 2016, 22:04 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq37hvphji.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20161210085556.nwg3pbay367jqin5@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> On Fri, Dec 09, 2016 at 01:43:24PM -0500, Ariel wrote:
> ...
>> But it doesn't have to be that way. You could make add -p identical to add
>> without options, except the -p prompts to review diffs first.
>
> The question is whether you would annoy people using "-p" if you started
> including untracked files by default. I agree because it's inherently an
> interactive process that we can be looser with backwards compatibility.

It might be interactive, but it will be irritating that we suddenly have to see hundreds of lines in an untracked file before we are asked to say "no I do not want to add this file" and have to do so for all the untracked files that happen to match the given pathspec.

It might make it less irritating if one of the interactive choices offered in the first prompt were N that tells the command: "No, ignore all the untracked paths", though. I dunno.

Also, because "git add -p" (no pathspec) is NOT a no-op, the similarity Ariel sees with "git add" (no other options) does not hold. As you kept explaining (but perhaps not successfully being understood yet), "add -p" works like "add -u", and it will make the command incoherent if we allowed "git add -p <path>" to add new paths, exactly because "git add -u <path>" does not do so. Of course that can be fixed by allowing "git add -u" to also add new paths that match pathspec.

Of course, Ariel can vote for making "add -p" more like "add" (with no options) than "add -u". I _think_ it is a better way to solve the incoherence than making "add -u" to add new paths. But what it means is that "add -p <paths>" works on both tracked and untracked paths that match the given pathspec <paths>, and also "add -p" (no pathspec) must become a no-op (because "add" without option and pathspec is).