Countless times you have been told to never use git add . when staging files. You've been to conferences where git experts say you shouldn't use it. Tech people of Twitter also say it. Again and again, you hear never use git add . to stage your files.

Habits

I get it. I don't want to accidentally stage a file, then commit it. Muscle memory is often times the culprit here. I don't even realize I'm typing git add . until I hit enter. If you are like me, you have a git undo alias mapped to reset --soft HEAD^. I can't count the times I have accidentally staged a file, then rapid fire commit with some message. I have done it enough times to justify a git alias.

I try to do as much work as possible in the terminal. On occasion when I need to do a highly selective commit, I will often jump to an IDE and use that to do selective adds. It's not part of my natural workflow, so it feels clunky.

Then What?

If we should never use git add ., then what should we use?

On Twitter a few weeks ago, I saw @systemdesign42 post his top 4 git commands. In there was git add -i. Stage files interactively.

git add -i

I have been using git for 7 years and have never seen the interactive form of git add. I tried it immediately and found it incredibly intuitive. I can add edited files, untracked files, and undo the mistakes.

I have been deliberately using the interactive mode in an effort to break old habits. Now that I use it daily, I find the selective staging forces me to look at each edited file before staging a commit, in fact I don't think I've had to use my git undo alias since.

Maybe I'm late to the game on this, but if you find yourself in the same position, try putting git add -i into your daily workflow.

ref:
https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Interactive-Staging