Sometimes I accidentally git add files. Or more often, I do git add . and get a huge changelist and then realize I want to move certain files to a different changelist or a different branch. I could do a git reset which, absent --soft or --hard, pulls all the changes out of the index (aka dircache aka staging area) but leaves them in the filesystem (aka working tree). But wouldn’t it be nice to leave all the files in the index except the few I want to keep out?
Yes. Yes, it would. And believe it or not, git has been telling you how, every time you do a git status. Like me, you’ve probably seen this line often enough for it to be completely invisible:
# (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
“Oh,” I hear the whole Internet saying, “that’s what that means.
“But why,” you continue, “instead of
documenting an obscure feature at runtime during a tangentially related operation, wouldn’t they just provide a simple git unadd command?”
Fortunately, you can just run
git config --global alias.unadd "reset HEAD"
and now you can do
git unadd foo.txt bar.txt
and only those files will be pulled out of your index. (Unfortunately, the silly overcommunication is not removed this time.)
See also GitFaq: [Why is "git rm" not the inverse of "git add"?](http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitFaq#Whyis.22gitrm.22nottheinverseof.22gitadd.22.3F)
September 2, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Any particular reason you didn’t go for “remove”? “unadd” seems almost as obscure as “reset HEAD”.
September 2, 2009 at 5:51 pm
“remove” is an expansion of “rm” and means something else altogether in Gitistan — see that FAQ link in my earlier comment. I agree that git terminology is hazy at best but I’m not in a position to fix it, and after [browsing Google](http://www.google.com/search?q=git+unadd) it seems many others share my intuition that you’d call undoing an add an “[unadd](http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/git/2006/2/1/200270)”.
September 2, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Nice little trick, now added to my aliases. Thanks for sharing.
September 2, 2009 at 11:49 pm
Thanks, this is useful… Now I’m worried my custom git configs might end up as long ad my vim config!
September 4, 2009 at 12:11 am
I got this aliased to git unstage and more @ http://github.com/grosser/dotfiles/blob/master/gitconfig ;)
September 8, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Cool stuff Alex. For those who may not know, HEAD is the default:
“
Commit to make the current HEAD. If not given defaults to HEAD.”
So, its really just typing unadd instead of reset. I can see how that will work nicely and all, but sometimes I find myself in a land without personal aliases and wishing I hadn’t used so many. ymmv.
September 8, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Even when I’m on a system without all my pretty aliases, it’s useful to know that git is case-insensitive by default, so you can type ‘head’ instead of ‘HEAD’.
October 15, 2009 at 10:05 am