My expectation is that `git add -u` will stage precisely the changes listed in `git status` under "Changes not staged for commit". However, this isn't the case, and it's confusing. In particular, if I set `ignore=all` in .gitmodules for a submodule and then make changes to that submodule, `git status` does not show the changes (which is what I expect), but `git add -u` still stages the changes to the submodule (not what I expect)! This behavior occurs with git 2.26.2 on Ubuntu 18.04.
This script demonstrates the problem:
#!/bin/bash -ex
echo "Check out a random repository" git clone https://github.com/crockeea/cryptonite.git cd cryptonite
echo "Add a random submodule" git submodule add https://github.com/crockeea/wai.git
echo "Track an older commit in the submodule" cd wai git checkout HEAD^ cd .. git add -A git commit -m "Added submodule one commit behind its tip-of-master"
echo "What happens if I check out a newer commit in the submodule?" cd wai git checkout master cd .. git status echo "git status shows that the submodule is dirty"
echo "We can fix that by adding `ignore=all` to .gitmodules" echo -e '\tignore = all' >> .gitmodules
git status echo "Now the dirty submodule is not shown"
echo "This looks good; let's stage the changes to .gitmodules" git add -u
echo "And verify what was staged..." git status echo "The dirty submodule was staged! This is not what I expect." echo "I expect that `git add -u` will only stage the changes to .gitmodules"
cd .. rm -rf cryptonite
Regards, Eric Crockett