Git adding "unchanged" files to the stage

Question

For a project I'm working on, I want to use:

git add . -A

to add some files to the stage. The problem is that Git thinks these files are unchanged from the last commit, so they are ignored. However, I personally changed the file, but Git still sees the file as unchanged.

How can I "forcefully" add that single file to my repository?

Solution 1

check your .gitignore file there must be some pattern matching this file which is excluding file from being staged. Or you can use git add . -f to forcely add these files.

Solution 2

It seems like the assume-unchanged-bit is set for that file. With that bit set, git will not look for changes of that file anymore. Unset it by typing:

git update-index --no-assume-unchanged <file>

After that, git status as well as git add should detect the changed file.

Comments

[Edward Thomson]

No, a .gitignore only affects files when they're detected as untracked - ie, when they are not yet in the repository. Once a file is in the repository, a .gitignore will not apply to it.