gitgit-addgit-rmgit-stage

Staging Deleted files


Say I have a file in my git repository called foo.

Suppose it has been deleted with rm (not git rm). Then git status will show:

Changes not staged for commit:

    deleted: foo

How do I stage this individual file deletion?

If I try:

git add foo

It says:

'foo' did not match any files.

Update (9 years later, lol):

This looks like it has been fixed in git 2.x:

$ git --version
git version 2.25.1

$ mkdir repo

$ cd repo

$ git init .
Initialized empty Git repository in repo/.git/

$ touch foo bar baz

$ git add foo bar baz

$ git commit -m "initial commit"
[master (root-commit) 79c736b] initial commit
3 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 bar
create mode 100644 baz
create mode 100644 foo

$ rm foo

$ git status
On branch master
Changes not staged for commit:
    deleted: foo

$ git add foo

$ git status
On branch master
Changes to be committed:
    deleted:    foo

Solution

  • Since Git 2.0.0, git add will also stage file deletions.

    Git 2.0.0 Docs - git-add

    < pathspec >…

    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 update the index to match the current state of the directory as a whole (e.g. specifying dir will record not just a file dir/file1 modified in the working tree, a file dir/file2 added to the working tree, but also a file dir/file3 removed from the working tree. Note that older versions of Git used to ignore removed files; use --no-all option if you want to add modified or new files but ignore removed ones.