Git Version Control Cookbook

Interactive add

The exposed staging area Git offers sometimes leads to confusion, especially when adding a file, changing it a bit, and then adding the file again to be able to commit the changes made after the first add. While it can seem a bit cumbersome to add the file after every little change, it is also a big advantage that you can stage and unstage changes. With the git add command, it's even possible to only add some changes to a file in the staging area. This comes in handy, especially if you make a lot of changes to a file and, for example, want to split the changes into bug fixes, refactoring, and features. This example will show how you can easily do this.