Interactive Staging
Interactive staging, also known as interactive mode or interactive patching, is a feature in Git that allows you to selectively stage changes from your working directory for a commit, offering more control over the staging process. It's particularly useful when you have made several changes in a single file or across multiple files and want to stage them selectively instead of committing all changes at once.
Start Interactive Staging
To start interactive staging, use the git add -i or git add --interactive command followed by the name of the file or directory you want to stage changes from.
git add -i myfile.txt
staged unstaged path
1: unchanged +0/-1 TODO
2: unchanged +1/-1 index.html
3: unchanged +5/-1 lib/simplegit.rb
*** Commands ***
1: [s]tatus 2: [u]pdate 3: [r]evert 4: [a]dd untracked
5: [p]atch 6: [d]iff 7: [q]uit 8: [h]elp
What now>
Showing the same information you get with git status but a bit more succinct and informative. It lists the changes you’ve staged on the left and unstaged changes on the right. After this comes a “Commands” section, which allows you to do a number of things like staging and unstaging files, staging parts of files, adding untracked files, and displaying diffs of what has been staged.
Staging Modes
Update Mode to Stage Changes
If you type u or 2 (for update) at the What now> prompt, you’re prompted for which files you want to stage:
What now> u
staged unstaged path
1: unchanged +0/-1 TODO
2: unchanged +1/-1 index.html
3: unchanged +5/-1 lib/simplegit.rb
Update>>
You can then select the files you want to stage by entering the numbers corresponding to the files. You can select multiple files by separating the numbers with spaces.
Update>> 1,2
staged unstaged path
* 1: unchanged +0/-1 TODO
* 2: unchanged +1/-1 index.html
3: unchanged +5/-1 lib/simplegit.rb
Update>>
Update>>
updated 2 paths
*** Commands ***
1: [s]tatus 2: [u]pdate 3: [r]evert 4: [a]dd untracked
5: [p]atch 6: [d]iff 7: [q]uit 8: [h]elp
What now> s
staged unstaged path
1: +0/-1 nothing TODO
2: +1/-1 nothing index.html
3: unchanged +5/-1 lib/simplegit.rb
Unstaging Changes with Revert Mode
Now you can see that the TODO and index.html files are staged and the simplegit.rb file is still unstaged. If you want to unstage the TODO file at this point, you use the r or 3 (for revert) option:
*** Commands ***
1: [s]tatus 2: [u]pdate 3: [r]evert 4: [a]dd untracked
5: [p]atch 6: [d]iff 7: [q]uit 8: [h]elp
What now> r
staged unstaged path
1: +0/-1 nothing TODO
2: +1/-1 nothing index.html
3: unchanged +5/-1 lib/simplegit.rb
Revert>> 1
staged unstaged path
* 1: +0/-1 nothing TODO
2: +1/-1 nothing index.html
3: unchanged +5/-1 lib/simplegit.rb
Revert>> [enter]
reverted one path
Status Mode
Looking at your Git status again, you can see that you’ve unstaged the TODO file:
*** Commands ***
1: [s]tatus 2: [u]pdate 3: [r]evert 4: [a]dd untracked
5: [p]atch 6: [d]iff 7: [q]uit 8: [h]elp
What now> s
staged unstaged path
1: unchanged +0/-1 TODO
2: +1/-1 nothing index.html
3: unchanged +5/-1 lib/simplegit.rb
Diff Changes
To see the diff of what you’ve staged, you can use the d or 6 (for diff) command. It shows you a list of your staged files, and you can select the ones for which you would like to see the staged diff. This is much like specifying git diff --cached on the command line:
*** Commands ***
1: [s]tatus 2: [u]pdate 3: [r]evert 4: [a]dd untracked
5: [p]atch 6: [d]iff 7: [q]uit 8: [h]elp
What now> d
staged unstaged path
1: +1/-1 nothing index.html
Review diff>> 1
diff --git a/index.html b/index.html
index 4d07108..4335f49 100644
--- a/index.html
+++ b/index.html
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ Date Finder
<p id="out">...</p>
-<div id="footer">contact : support@github.com</div>
+<div id="footer">contact : email.support@github.com</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
Staging Patches
In this mode, Git displays changes within each file and allows you to interactively stage them. It’s also possible for Git to stage certain parts of files and not the rest. For example, if you make two changes to your simplegit.rb file and want to stage one of them and not the other, doing so is very easy in Git. To do so, you can type p or 5 (for patch). Git will ask you which files you would like to partially stage; then, for each section of the selected files, it will display hunks of the file diff and ask if you would like to stage them, one by one:
diff --git a/lib/simplegit.rb b/lib/simplegit.rb
index dd5ecc4..57399e0 100644
--- a/lib/simplegit.rb
+++ b/lib/simplegit.rb
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ class SimpleGit
end
def log(treeish = 'master')
- command("git log -n 25 #{treeish}")
+ command("git log -n 30 #{treeish}")
end
def blame(path)
Stage this hunk [y,n,a,d,/,j,J,g,e,?]?
Stage this hunk [y,n,a,d,/,j,J,g,e,?]? ?
y - stage this hunk
n - do not stage this hunk
a - stage this and all the remaining hunks in the file
d - do not stage this hunk nor any of the remaining 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
Generally, you’ll type y or n if you want to stage each hunk, but staging all of them in certain files or skipping a hunk decision until later can be helpful too. If you stage one part of the file and leave another part unstaged, your status output will look like this:
What now> 1
staged unstaged path
1: unchanged +0/-1 TODO
2: +1/-1 nothing index.html
3: +1/-1 +4/-0 lib/simplegit.rb
It shows you that a couple of lines are staged and a couple are unstaged. You’ve partially staged this file. At this point, you can exit the interactive adding script and run git commit to commit the partially staged files.
The -p option or --patch will 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 initial command menu and directly jumps to the patch subcommand.
git add -p