Feature request: git commit -A

Aidan Feldman· Jun 24, 2014, 19:01 UTC · lore

Hi all- I work on the education team at GitHub and do a fair number of Git workshops. One thing that I've always found difficult to explain to newbies is how the staging area works, and why it's useful. As a hand-wave to simplify things, I usually have them use

git add -A git commit -m "..."

to not really have to worry about untracked vs. modified/removed files aren't included with `git commit -a` or `git add .`. I would like to add a `-A` flag to the `commit` command, which effectively does a `git add -A` before committing.

I was trying to submit a patch myself, but couldn't even manage to find where the various flags are defined :-) Does the feature sound reasonable? Mind pointing me in the right direction of where this would be added?

Thanks! -Aidan Feldman

David Turner· Jun 24, 2014, 23:34 UTC · re: Aidan Feldman · lore

Re: Feature request: git commit -A

On Tue, 2014-06-24 at 15:01 -0400, Aidan Feldman wrote:

Show 18 quoted lines

> Hi all-
> I work on the education team at GitHub and do a fair number of Git
> workshops.  One thing that I've always found difficult to explain to
> newbies is how the staging area works, and why it's useful.  As a
> hand-wave to simplify things, I usually have them use
> 
> git add -A
> git commit -m "..."
> 
> to not really have to worry about untracked vs. modified/removed files
> aren't included with `git commit -a` or `git add .`.  I would like to
> add a `-A` flag to the `commit` command, which effectively does a `git
> add -A` before committing.
> 
> I was trying to submit a patch myself, but couldn't even manage to
> find where the various flags are defined :-)  Does the feature sound
> reasonable?  Mind pointing me in the right direction of where this
> would be added?

Look at builtin/commit.c in the cmd_commit function.  You'll see:
		OPT_BOOL('a', "all", &all, N_("commit all changed files")),
Just add another one, 
		OPT_BOOL('A', "all-untracked", &all_untracked, N_("commit all changed
files as well as all non-excluded untracked files")),

That said, I am mildly opposed to this feature because it will inevitably lead to cruft (and credentials) being checked into repositories. It's easier, but it's not simpler.