Situation: I have a Git repository with files already in the index. I make changes to several files, open Git and add these files to my staging area with "git add ."
Question: How do I remove one of those files from the staging area but not remove it from the index or undo the changes to the file itself?
If I understand the question correctly, you simply want to "undo" the git add that was done for that file.
If you need to remove a single file from the staging area, use
git reset HEAD -- <file>
If you need to remove a whole directory (folder) from the staging area, use
git reset HEAD -- <directoryName>
Your modifications will be kept. When you run git status the file will once again show up as modified but not yet staged.
See the git reset man page for details.
For newer versions of Git there is git restore --staged <file>.
When I do a git status with Git version 2.26.2.windows.1 it is also recommended for unstaging:
Changes to be committed:
(use "git restore --staged <file>..." to unstage)
(This post shows, that in earlier versions git reset HEAD was recommended at this point)
I can highly recommend this post explaining the differences between git revert, git restore and git reset and also additional parameters for git restore.
In case you just want to remove a subset of the changes to your file, you can use:
git reset -p
or
git reset -p <file_name>
This command is basically the reverse of git add -p: it will only remove the selected changes from the staging area. I find it extremely useful in "unadding" something that I added by mistake.
If you want to remove files following a certain pattern and you are using git rm --cached, you can use file-glob patterns too.
See here.
I think you probably got confused with the concept of index, as @CB Bailey commented:
The staging area is the index.
You can simply consider staging directory and index as the same thing.
So, just like @Tim Henigan's answer, I guess:
you simply want to "undo" the
git addthat was done for that file.
Here is my answer:
Commonly, there are two ways to undo a stage operation, as other answers already mentioned:
git reset HEAD <file>
and
git rm --cached <file>
But what is the difference?
Assume the file has been staged and exists in working directory too, use git rm --cached <file> if you want to remove it from staging directory, and keep the file in working directory. But notice that this operation will not only remove the file from staging directory but also mark the file as deleted in staging directory, if you use
git status
after this operation, you will see this :
deleted: <file>
It's a record of removing the file from staging directory. If you don't want to keep that record and just simply want to undo a previous stage operation of a file, use git reset HEAD <file> instead.
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PS: I have noticed some answers mentioned:
git checkout -- <file>
This command is for the situation when the file has been staged, but the file has been modified in working directory after it was staged, use this operation to restore the file in working directory from staging directory. In other words, after this operation, changes happen in your working directory, NOT your staging directory.
After version 2.23, Git has introduced the git restore command which you can use to do that. Quoting the official documentation:
Restore specified paths in the working tree with some contents from a restore source. If a path is tracked but does not exist in the restore source, it will be removed to match the source.
The command can also be used to restore the content in the index with
--staged, or restore both the working tree and the index with--staged --worktree.
So you can invoke git restore --staged <path> and unstage the file but also keep the changes you made. Remember that if the file was not staged you lose all the changes you made to it.
If you make changes to many tracked files but only want to stage a few of them, doing a
git add .
isn't always favorable (or recommended)- as it stages all the tracked files (some cases where you want to keep changes only to yourself and don't want to stage them to the remote repository).
nor is it ideal doing a bunch of
git add path/to/file1 path/to/file2
if you have a lot of nested directories (which is the case in most projects) - gets annoying
That's when Git GUI is helpful (probably only time I use it). Just open Git GUI, it shows staged and unstaged file sections. Select the files from the staged section that you want to unstage and press
Ctrl+U(for windows)
to unstage them.
My sample:
$ git status
On branch feature/wildfire/VNL-425-update-wrong-translation
Your branch and 'origin/feature/wildfire/VNL-425-update-wrong-translation' have diverged,
and have 4 and 1 different commits each, respectively.
(use "git pull" to merge the remote branch into yours)
Changes to be committed:
(use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
modified: ShopBack/Source/Date+Extension.swift
modified: ShopBack/Source/InboxData.swift
modified: ShopBack/en.lproj/Localizable.strings
As you may notice
> Changes to be committed:
> (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
