Selectively git add Files

In the project initialization steps, we learned to use git add . to include all files in the project folder to the first git commit. But most beginners only use git add . for the rest of their lives. This command adds all files without reviewing them. We must use it carefully.

Overuse of git add .

If unrelated code is committed to the same commit, we won’t be able to review our history easily and then move back to a certain point in the past.

Selectively add files

When we work on two features at the same time, we should commit them separately. For example, we might concurrently implement a feature and fix a typo or a minor CSS style. This results in changes that belong to two different purposes:

• The first is the planned feature implementation.
• The other purpose is minor changes not related to the feature.

We can selectively add only specific files using git add <filename> or git add <folder path>.

Then, we git commit with those added files only and repeat to commit the other files.

Selectively add code within a file

Occasionally, we have two feature changes in the same file. In that case, we need to add only part of the code within a file. To do so, we need git add -i, which stands for “git add interactively.”

Note: The git add . command means adding all the changes in the current directory. If we need all changes into the next commit, we can also combine the add and commit into one command: git commit -am "<MESSAGE>".

Suppose we have three files, but we only want to git add the first and third files. We can do the following:

$ git add file1.txt file3.txt
$ git commit -m "Commit with File 1 and File 3."

We can verify by git status command:

$ git status

Practice these commands in the terminal given below: