Did you just say you want to 'git add' all those files except 1?

You run a 'git status' and see that you've updated a heap of files. One of those files you don't want to commit (often a config). What's the easiest thing to do? Well, I have a few options.

Option 1. Use 'git assume-unchanged'. I have a blog post about that here: https://dev.to/nickraphael/git-assume-unchanged-for-when-you-want-git-to-ignore-an-edit-for-a-while-2lig

Option 2. Just undo you edit before doing the add. Basically using 'git checkout xxx/dontcheckmein.txt'

Option 3. Run a 'git add .' to add all the files. Then run 'git reset -- xxx/dontcheckmein.txt'. This will undo the add.

Then you can 'git commit' to your hearts content.

Comments

[loumarven]

Hey there,

Came across this post as I was searching for a solution to the same problem.
Saw this in StackOverflow:

answer re: Add all files to a commit except a single file?

Aug 19 '18

66

Now git supports exclude certain paths and files by pathspec magic :(exclude) and its short form :!. So you can easily achieve it as the following command.

git add --all -- :!main/dontcheckmein.txt
git add -- . :!main/dontcheckmein.txt

Actually you can specify more:

git add --all -- :!path/to/file1 :!path/to/file2 :!path/to/folder1/*

…

Open Full Answer

The -- option separates the add command from the list of files, so the files won't be mistaken as command-line options. In the case above, all files in the current directory (.), except excludedfile.
I've yet to find a documentation for the syntax of the exclusion of files, but I've been using the command and has been working for me (my Git version is 2.20).