Stage only deleted files with git add

Question

I have run git status and see several modified files and several deleted files.

Is it possible to stage only deleted or only modified files?

Saxena

git status also tells you how to stage and unstange the new/modified/deleted files. – Osric

Answer 1

If you have a mix of modified and deleted files and only want to stage deleted files to the index, you can use git ls-files as a filter.

git ls-files --deleted | xargs git add

If you only want this to apply to part of the file tree, give one or more subdirectories as arguments to ls-files:

git ls-files --deleted -- lib/foo | xargs git add

To do the same for only modified files, use the --modified (-m) option instead of --deleted (-d).

Ladanum

If the names of the deleted files contain spaces you should pass the parameter -d "\n" to xargs. – Clonus

You could also use git ls-files -z --deleted | xargs -0 git add for filenames with special characters (even newlines). – Ladanum

Thanks steve - Special characters and space in filenames – Koontz

In case you want to add this as an alias to .gitconfig, here's a caveat: you must stringify the command and prefix with it ! like this: sd = !"git ls-files --deleted | xargs git add" – Coati

To account for spaces in the filenames, use git ls-files --deleted | xargs -d '\n' git add --all – Adoptive

Windows Powershell I got: xargs : The term 'xargs' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct and try again. – Erupt

🤩 Powerful stuff there! First I have heard of ls-files. – Scarbrough

Answer 2

For PowerShell

git ls-files --deleted | % {git add $_}

Rumanian

Answer 3

Same as the @steve answer, but adding a little change:

Add --all to the end of the command to add all the files returned by the ls-files command to the index

git ls-files --deleted | xargs git add --all

Reenareenforce

Answer 4

For all the love ls-files is getting here, it seems to me

git add --all $(git diff --diff-filter=D --name-only)

is more straightforward.

Palingenesis

This does not work if a path needs to be quoted. – Lacagnia

Answer 5

Another way:

git diff --name-only --diff-filter=D | sed 's| |\\ |g' | xargs git add

I use sed here because the paths could have whitespace characters.

Rilda

This works on OSX! – Tend

Answer 6

As an alternative to the accepted answer, you could use the interactive mode git add -i, then select 2 to update which files you want to stage and pick only the deleted ones (for example, use a range 1-30).

It's easier to remember sometimes.

Crankcase

Answer 7

You can use this command to stage only the deleted files

git diff --diff-filter=D --name-only -z | xargs -0 git add

Hope it helps!

Sterile

Answer 8

To do it with just core commands, built for scripting:

git diff-files -z --diff-filter=D --name-only | git update-index -z --remove --stdin

Depress