不提交暂存（git）

Question

We know that, in git, when we stage a file with

git add readme.txt

the "readme.txt" file is not committed, and it remains so until we use

git commit readme.txt -m "..."

But I cannot imagine that such a situation is useful. In what situation do we ever need to stage a file without committing it?

Answer 1

It is useful if you want to commit it later .

You could for example, stage it today, and continue to work on the project tomorrow (you think the modified file is okay, but still have to fix others and add unit tests). Having staged the file gives you a "savepoint" of sorts. You can then do things like diff against the staged version.

A common workflow is to immediately stage new files (even though they are still empty), so that they show up as "modified" instead of "untracked" and you don't later forget to include them in the commit. Many IDE do that automatically when you create new source code files.

git commit readme.txt -m "..."

Actually, you would probably not be saying "commit readme.txt". You can commit without listing any files, and it will commit everything that was staged before.