Check in single file in Git?

Question

My apologies if this is a silly question but I'm a VSS/VSTS guy trying to convert to Git :)

I cloned a repository and pulled down a load of Visual Studio projects. While working on those projects I noticed that another developer had submitted an invalid .sql file. I fixed that .sql file for them, but am now unsure how to check in just that .sql file

My code changes are all half-baked so they can't be checked in at present. I have Git Extensions on my computer, and when I right click on the file in Windows Explorer and go Git Extensions -> Commit, there are lots of files referenced on the left. The file I want to check in has a symbol of a pencil, and the mass of other files all have a green + symbol.

Solution 1

you only need to add the changes in the sql file to the index and run git commit.

git add path/to/file.sql
git commit -m 'fixed broken sql file'

don't worry about your other changes, as long as you haven't added them, they won't be committed (to make sure there are no changes in the index, run git reset before adding the other change)

Solution 2

It's probably safest/easiest to do it from the command line:

$ git add foo.sql
$ git commit -m "Fixed foo.sql"

This just commits the file foo.sql. Before the commit you can do:

$ git status

to confirm that only the required file will be committed (it will list the other modified files separately, but they will not be "staged" for the next commit).

Comments

[johnny]

You can also use git status to see what files are staged in the index or git diff --staged to see what changes are staged...