Commit only part of a file in Git

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You can use:

git add --patch <filename>

or for short:

git add -p <filename>

Git will break down your file into what it thinks are sensible “hunks” (portions of the file). It will then prompt you with this question:

Stage this hunk [y,n,q,a,d,/,j,J,g,s,e,?]?

Here is a description of each option:

  • y stage this hunk for the next commit
  • n do not stage this hunk for the next commit
  • q quit; do not stage this hunk or any of the remaining hunks
  • a stage this hunk and all later hunks in the file
  • d do not stage this hunk or any of the later hunks in the file
  • g select a hunk to go to
  • / search for a hunk matching the given regex
  • j leave this hunk undecided, see next undecided hunk
  • J leave this hunk undecided, see next hunk
  • k leave this hunk undecided, see previous undecided hunk
  • K leave this hunk undecided, see previous hunk
  • s split the current hunk into smaller hunks
  • e manually edit the current hunk
    • You can then edit the hunk manually by replacing +/- by # (thanks veksen)
  • ? print hunk help

If the file is not in the repository yet, you can first do git add -N <filename>. Afterwards you can go on with git add -p <filename>.

Afterwards, you can use:

  • git diff --staged to check that you staged the correct changes
  • git reset -p to unstage mistakenly added hunks
  • git commit -v to view your commit while you edit the commit message.

Note this is far different than the git format-patch command, whose purpose is to parse commit data into a .patch files.

Reference for future: Git Tools – Interactive Staging

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