add-only-tracked-files-from-a-directory.md

Add Only Tracked Files From A Directory

The two extremes of staging files in a git repo are to either selectively pick each individual chunk of changes with git add --patch (my preference!) or to run git add -A to add everything.

Now let's say I have large directory full of files that get generated during test runs. Most of these files are tracked (already checked in to the repository). There are also many new files generated as part of the most recent test run.

I want to staging the changes to files that are already tracked, but hold off on doing anything with the new files.

Running git add spec/cassettes won't do the track because that will pull in everything. Running git add --patch spec/cassettes will take long and be tedious. Instead what I want is the -u flag. It's short for update which means it will only stage already tracked files.

$ git add -u spec/cassettes

That will stage every change to any already known files in spec/cassettes.

See man git-add for more details.