Jon ForrestA while back (6 Sep 2025) I submitted a report about how running
git add x bogus_file
where 'x' exists but 'bogus_file' doesn't results in 'x' not being added to the index. Peff was kind enough to explain that the presence of even 1 invalid file invalidates the whole 'git add' command, no matter how many valid files are included. OK, fine.
This morning I was experimenting with what happens if a file is specified on a 'git add' command line where the file exists but is in a .gitignore file. I was expecting the same behavior as when the file doesn't exist at all. Here's what happened:
% ls -l file1 jon -rw-r--r-- 1 jonf 15 Dec 30 15:36 file1 -rw-r--r-- 1 jonf 0 Jan 4 11:19 jon
% git check-ignore -v file1 .gitignore:2:file1 file1
So far, so good. Both file1 and jon exist, but file1 is in .gitignore. Just for yuks, I start with a clean repo.
% git init Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/fish/.git/
The index is empty, as shown by % git ls-files --cached %
I then ran
% git add file1 jon git add file1 jon The following paths are ignored by one of your .gitignore files: file1
Again, this is exactly what I expected. But, running '% git ls-files --cached' shows
jon
This is *not* what I expected. I expected the 'git add' command to not add anything to the index, the same way it behaved when I tried to add a file that doesn't exist (see the beginning of this message). But, apparently specifying a missing file is considered a different kind of error than specifying an ignored file.
Once again, I'm wondering if this is expected behavior.
Cordially, Jon Forrest