GIT-ADD(1)GIT-ADD(1)NAMEgit-add - Add file contents to the index
SYNOPSIS
git add [-n] [-v] [--force | -f] [--interactive | -i] [--patch | -p]
[--edit | -e] [--all | [--update | -u]] [--intent-to-add | -N]
[--refresh] [--ignore-errors] [--ignore-missing] [--]
[<filepattern>...]
DESCRIPTION
This command updates the index using the current content found in the
working tree, to prepare the content staged for the next commit. It
typically adds the current content of existing paths as a whole, but
with some options it can also be used to add content with only part of
the changes made to the working tree files applied, or remove paths
that do not exist in the working tree anymore.
The "index" holds a snapshot of the content of the working tree, and it
is this snapshot that is taken as the contents of the next commit. Thus
after making any changes to the working directory, and before running
the commit command, you must use the add command to add any new or mod-
ified files to the index.
This command can be performed multiple times before a commit. It only
adds the content of the specified file(s) at the time the add command
is run; if you want subsequent changes included in the next commit,
then you must run git add again to add the new content to the index.
The git status command can be used to obtain a summary of which files
have changes that are staged for the next commit.
The git add command will not add ignored files by default. If any
ignored files were explicitly specified on the command line, git add
will fail with a list of ignored files. Ignored files reached by direc-
tory recursion or filename globbing performed by Git (quote your globs
before the shell) will be silently ignored. The git add command can be
used to add ignored files with the -f (force) option.
Please see git-commit(1) for alternative ways to add content to a com-
mit.
OPTIONS
<filepattern>...
Files to add content from. Fileglobs (e.g. *.c) can be given to
add all matching files. Also a leading directory name (e.g. dir
to add dir/file1 and dir/file2) can be given to add all files in
the directory, recursively.
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GIT-ADD(1)GIT-ADD(1)-n, --dry-run
Don’t actually add the file(s), just show if they exist
and/or will be ignored.
-v, --verbose
Be verbose.
-f, --force
Allow adding otherwise ignored files.
-i, --interactive
Add modified contents in the working tree interactively to the
index. Optional path arguments may be supplied to limit opera-
tion to a subset of the working tree. See “Interactive
mode” for details.
-p, --patch
Interactively choose hunks of patch between the index and the
work tree and add them to the index. This gives the user a
chance to review the difference before adding modified contents
to the index.
This effectively runs add --interactive, but bypasses the ini-
tial command menu and directly jumps to the patch subcommand.
See “Interactive mode” for details.
-e, --edit
Open the diff vs. the index in an editor and let the user edit
it. After the editor was closed, adjust the hunk headers and
apply the patch to the index.
The intent of this option is to pick and choose lines of the
patch to apply, or even to modify the contents of lines to be
staged. This can be quicker and more flexible than using the
interactive hunk selector. However, it is easy to confuse one-
self and create a patch that does not apply to the index. See
EDITING PATCHES below.
-u, --update
Only match <filepattern> against already tracked files in the
index rather than the working tree. That means that it will
never stage new files, but that it will stage modified new con-
tents of tracked files and that it will remove files from the
index if the corresponding files in the working tree have been
removed.
If no <filepattern> is given, default to "."; in other words,
update all tracked files in the current directory and its
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GIT-ADD(1)GIT-ADD(1)
subdirectories.
-A, --all
Like -u, but match <filepattern> against files in the working
tree in addition to the index. That means that it will find new
files as well as staging modified content and removing files
that are no longer in the working tree.
-N, --intent-to-add
Record only the fact that the path will be added later. An entry
for the path is placed in the index with no content. This is
useful for, among other things, showing the unstaged content of
such files with git diff and committing them with git commit -a.
--refresh
Don’t add the file(s), but only refresh their stat()
information in the index.
--ignore-errors
If some files could not be added because of errors indexing
them, do not abort the operation, but continue adding the oth-
ers. The command shall still exit with non-zero status.
--ignore-missing
This option can only be used together with --dry-run. By using
this option the user can check if any of the given files would
be ignored, no matter if they are already present in the work
tree or not.
-- This option can be used to separate command-line options from
the list of files, (useful when filenames might be mistaken for
command-line options).
CONFIGURATION
The optional configuration variable core.excludesfile indicates a path
to a file containing patterns of file names to exclude from git-add,
similar to $GIT_DIR/info/exclude. Patterns in the exclude file are used
in addition to those in info/exclude. See gitrepository-layout(5).
EXAMPLES
o Adds content from all *.txt files under Documentation directory and
its subdirectories:
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GIT-ADD(1)GIT-ADD(1)
.ft C
$ git add Documentation/\*.txt
.ft
Note that the asterisk * is quoted from the shell in this example;
this lets the command include the files from subdirectories of Docu-
mentation/ directory.
o Considers adding content from all git-*.sh scripts:
.ft C
$ git add git-*.sh
.ft
Because this example lets the shell expand the asterisk (i.e. you
are listing the files explicitly), it does not consider sub-
dir/git-foo.sh.
INTERACTIVE MODE
When the command enters the interactive mode, it shows the output of
the status subcommand, and then goes into its interactive command loop.
The command loop shows the list of subcommands available, and gives a
prompt "What now> ". In general, when the prompt ends with a single >,
you can pick only one of the choices given and type return, like this:
.ft C
*** Commands ***
1: status 2: update 3: revert 4: add untracked
5: patch 6: diff 7: quit 8: help
What now> 1
.ft
You also could say s or sta or status above as long as the choice is
unique.
The main command loop has 6 subcommands (plus help and quit).
status This shows the change between HEAD and index (i.e. what will be
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GIT-ADD(1)GIT-ADD(1)
committed if you say git commit), and between index and working
tree files (i.e. what you could stage further before git commit
using git add) for each path. A sample output looks like this:
.ft C
staged unstaged path
1: binary nothing foo.png
2: +403/-35 +1/-1 git-add--interactive.perl
.ft
It shows that foo.png has differences from HEAD (but that is
binary so line count cannot be shown) and there is no difference
between indexed copy and the working tree version (if the work-
ing tree version were also different, binary would have been
shown in place of nothing). The other file, git-add--interac-
tive.perl, has 403 lines added and 35 lines deleted if you com-
mit what is in the index, but working tree file has further mod-
ifications (one addition and one deletion).
update This shows the status information and issues an "Update>>"
prompt. When the prompt ends with double >>, you can make more
than one selection, concatenated with whitespace or comma. Also
you can say ranges. E.g. "2-5 7,9" to choose 2,3,4,5,7,9 from
the list. If the second number in a range is omitted, all
remaining patches are taken. E.g. "7-" to choose 7,8,9 from the
list. You can say * to choose everything.
What you chose are then highlighted with *, like this:
.ft C
staged unstaged path
1: binary nothing foo.png
* 2: +403/-35 +1/-1 git-add--interactive.perl
.ft
To remove selection, prefix the input with - like this:
.ft C
Update>> -2
.ft
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GIT-ADD(1)GIT-ADD(1)
After making the selection, answer with an empty line to stage
the contents of working tree files for selected paths in the
index.
revert This has a very similar UI to update, and the staged information
for selected paths are reverted to that of the HEAD version.
Reverting new paths makes them untracked.
add untracked
This has a very similar UI to update and revert, and lets you
add untracked paths to the index.
patch This lets you choose one path out of a status like selection.
After choosing the path, it presents the diff between the index
and the working tree file and asks you if you want to stage the
change of each hunk. You can say:
y - stage this hunk
n - do not stage this hunk
q - quit; do not stage this hunk nor any of the remaining ones
a - stage this hunk and all later hunks in the file
d - do not stage this hunk nor any of the later hunks in the file
g - select a hunk to go to
/ - search for a hunk matching the given regex
j - leave this hunk undecided, see next undecided hunk
J - leave this hunk undecided, see next hunk
k - leave this hunk undecided, see previous undecided hunk
K - leave this hunk undecided, see previous hunk
s - split the current hunk into smaller hunks
e - manually edit the current hunk
? - print help
After deciding the fate for all hunks, if there is any hunk that
was chosen, the index is updated with the selected hunks.
diff This lets you review what will be committed (i.e. between HEAD
and index).
EDITING PATCHES
Invoking git add -e or selecting e from the interactive hunk selector
will open a patch in your editor; after the editor exits, the result is
applied to the index. You are free to make arbitrary changes to the
patch, but note that some changes may have confusing results, or even
result in a patch that cannot be applied. If you want to abort the
operation entirely (i.e., stage nothing new in the index), simply
delete all lines of the patch. The list below describes some common
things you may see in a patch, and which editing operations make sense
on them.
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GIT-ADD(1)GIT-ADD(1)
added content
Added content is represented by lines beginning with "+". You
can prevent staging any addition lines by deleting them.
removed content
Removed content is represented by lines beginning with "-". You
can prevent staging their removal by converting the "-" to a " "
(space).
modified content
Modified content is represented by "-" lines (removing the old
content) followed by "+" lines (adding the replacement content).
You can prevent staging the modification by converting "-" lines
to " ", and removing "+" lines. Beware that modifying only half
of the pair is likely to introduce confusing changes to the
index.
There are also more complex operations that can be performed.
But beware that because the patch is applied only to the index
and not the working tree, the working tree will appear to "undo"
the change in the index. For example, introducing a a new line
into the index that is in neither the HEAD nor the working tree
will stage the new line for commit, but the line will appear to
be reverted in the working tree.
Avoid using these constructs, or do so with extreme caution.
removing untouched content
Content which does not differ between the index and working tree
may be shown on context lines, beginning with a " " (space). You
can stage context lines for removal by converting the space to a
"-". The resulting working tree file will appear to re-add the
content.
modifying existing content
One can also modify context lines by staging them for removal
(by converting " " to "-") and adding a "+" line with the new
content. Similarly, one can modify "+" lines for existing addi-
tions or modifications. In all cases, the new modification will
appear reverted in the working tree.
new content
You may also add new content that does not exist in the patch;
simply add new lines, each starting with "+". The addition will
appear reverted in the working tree.
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GIT-ADD(1)GIT-ADD(1)
There are also several operations which should be avoided
entirely, as they will make the patch impossible to apply:
o adding context (" ") or removal ("-") lines
o deleting context or removal lines
o modifying the contents of context or removal lines
SEE ALSOgit-status(1)git-rm(1)git-reset(1)git-mv(1)git-commit(1)git-update-index(1)AUTHOR
Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org: mailto:torvalds@osdl.org>
DOCUMENTATION
Documentation by Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org:
mailto:git@vger.kernel.org>.
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
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