Is git add .; git commit -a equivalent to git add -A .; git commit -a?

Question

I am using Git version 1.9.1 and recently received this notice when making a commit on my repository:

warning: You ran 'git add' with neither '-A (--all)' or '--ignore-removal', whose behaviour will change in Git 2.0 with respect to paths you removed.

I usually commit changes by using these two commands:

git add .
git commit -a

I am now wondering whether I should switch to using --ignore-removal or -A. I read some of the other StackOverflow answers about this warning message, but I'm still not entirely clear on whether there would be any difference which option I use given that I'm immediately following it with git commit -a, which stages files for removal anyway.

My goal is to just have git automatically recognize all changes to a directory - additions, modifications, and deletions, and in fact I have an alias set up to do this in one command. I am currently leaning toward changing my alias to this:

git add -A .; git commit -a

Would that achieve my goal? My tentative understanding is that --ignore-removal would only be relevant in the case where I deleted some files but am not ready to commit those deletions to git yet - is that correct?

Thinking about this a bit more, I'm realizing I may not need the -a option on the commit command if I'm using -A on the add command, so how about this?

git add -A .; git commit

Zombo · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-20 04:59:40Z

1

My goal is to just have git automatically recognize all changes to a directory - additions, modifications, and deletions

Good sir, this is also my goal. I accomplish this by

git add -A
git commit

or

git add -A foo.bar
git commit

The first form will do as you say, it will add any and all changes. The second form will only add changes to the specified file. I would add that commit -a is not necessary with my way either, because everything has already been staged with git add. I have been using this method for over a year now and it works well for me.

Example

answered Dec 20, 2014 at 4:59

Zombo

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Matt Browne Over a year ago

Update: for my alias, I changed it to git commit . rather than just git commit, so that it will work from subdirectories too. That way I can commit only the files in a particular subdirectory if I want without getting a warning from git ("warning: The behavior of 'git add --all (or -A)' with no path argument from a subdirectory of the tree will change in Git 2.0 and should not be used anymore" etc...).

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