Re: Question about "git commit -a"

["Paolo Ciarrocchi" <paolo.ciarrocchi@gmail.com>]

On 10/5/07, Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se> wrote:
[...]
> As for the "git commit should default to -a" discussion, I think it's pretty
> clear where I stand ;-)

Fair enough.

Another try to have an easy explanation of how the staging area works:

paolo@paolo-desktop:~/HowIndexWorks$ ls
A  B  C  D  E  F  G

Now I edit A,B,C,D and E:

$ echo A >> A
$ echo B >> B
$ echo C >> C
$ echo D >> D
$ echo E >> E

I now realize want to only commit the changes I did to A,B,C,D.
First step is to place A,B,C and D into the staging area:
$ git add A B C D

Now I can commit:
$ git commitpaolo@paolo-desktop:~/HowIndexWorks$ git commit
Created commit 16032dc: I modified A,B,C and D
 4 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

It's now time to work on F and G:
$ echo F >> F
$ echo G >> G

Current status is:
paolo@paolo-desktop:~/HowIndexWorks$ git status
# On branch master
# Changed but not updated:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#
#       modified:   E
#       modified:   F
#       modified:   G

Instead of adding E,F and G to the staging are and then commit them in
two steps I can using a single command:
$ git commit E F G (in this case it's equivalent to git commit -a)

paolo@paolo-desktop:~/HowIndexWorks$ git commit E F G
Created commit 69ec8be: I modified E, F and G
 3 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

status now is:
paolo@paolo-desktop:~/HowIndexWorks$ git status
# On branch master
nothing to commit (working directory clean)

Regards,
-- 
Paolo
http://paolo.ciarrocchi.googlepages.com/