Adding Only Untracked Files

Question

One of the commands I find incredibly useful in Git is git add -u to throw everything but untracked files into the index. Is there an inverse of that?

Such as a way to add only the untracked files to the index without identifying them individually?

Solution 1

It's easy with git add -i. Type a (for "add untracked"), then * (for "all"), then q (to quit) and you're done.

To do it with a single command: echo -e "a\n*\nq\n"|git add -i

Solution 2

git ls-files -o --exclude-standard gives untracked files, so you can do something like below ( or add an alias to it):

git add $(git ls-files -o --exclude-standard)

Solution 3

Not exactly what you're looking for, but I've found this quite helpful:

git add -AN

Will add all files to the index, but without their content. Files that were untracked now behave as if they were tracked. Their content will be displayed in git diff, and you can add then interactively with git add -p.

Solution 4

You can add this to your ~/.gitconfig file:

[alias]
    add-untracked = !"git status --porcelain | awk '/\\?\\?/{ print $2 }' | xargs git add"

Then, from the commandline, just run:

git add-untracked

Solution 5

People have suggested piping the output of git ls-files to git add but this is going to fail in cases where there are filenames containing white space or glob characters such as *.

The safe way would be to use:

git ls-files -o --exclude-standard -z | xargs -0 git add

where -z tells git to use \0 line terminators and -0 tells xargs the same. The only disadvantage of this approach is that the -0 option is non-standard, so only some versions of xargs support it.

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Comments

[Pacerier]

Regarding "throw everything but untracked files into the index", .gitignore is specifically engineered for that purpose, not git add -u.

[Pacerier]

Also, are you asking to add the untracked files while removing all the currently tracked ones, or are you asking to add the untracked files on top of the currently tracked ones (making everything tracked)?

[Rob Wilkerson]

I was hoping there was something less, well, interactive, but it's certainly better than file by file. :-)

[Mat]

echo -e "a\n*\nq\n"|git add -i

[Stephan]

alias gau="git ls-files -o --exclude-standard | xargs -i git add '{}'" works for me

[Joshua Kunzmann]

git ls-files --help is quite a useful read: -o, --others Show other (i.e. untracked) files in the output

[BenKoshy]

@Mat thank you so is the complete command ----> git add -i a * q ??

[Paul Coccoli]

I like this approach, but it doesn't handle spaces in filenames.

[Simeon]

Argument list too long... so close!

[Lion789]

What to do, I am also, getting Argument list too long @Simeon

[Simeon]

@Lion789 See my answer on how to do this on Windows here: stackoverflow.com/questions/7446640/adding-only-untracked-fi‌​les/…

[user1338062]

Worth noting git add -i also allows wildcards as parameters, so you can do git add -i '*.xml' to only add new xml files.

[marckassay]

A more condensed version: git ls-files -o --exclude-standard | % { git add $_ }

[Pir Abdul]

Don't forget commit after adding untrack files ;)

[pmiranda]

I get a Huh after the a

[Tarasovych]

git add -u will add modified files not untracked

[nitsujri]

This is exactly what I was looking for - allows for git commit -p to walk through new files as well.

[Harry B]

For me with git 2.21.0 is was git add -i then 4 to add untracked then * for all then q to quit

[CervEd]

gir add -i then 4 then 1-300 repeat until done, if there are many untracked files

[seeker]

Nice, however I believe this will only give you the untracked files for the current directory. You would need to use pborenstein's answer above to retrieve a list of untracked files for the entire working tree.