Magit allows selective staging/unstaging, either of hunks, or by selecting lines (AKA Emacs's "region"). I avoid staging from the git commandline, unless I'm just doing whole files.
PS: Majutsu provides this too (a magit-like tool for jj)
PaulDavisThe1st 1 hours ago [-]
The per-line staging in magit is a frequent tool I use. I can be in the middle of bunch of other changes, change 1 line for a different reason that would otherwise be "mid-hunk", and the stage & commit it with its own explanation.
It releases me from having to have the "discipline" to stay 100% focused on the broader task at hand and say "hmm, I should fix that while I'm here", without co-mingling purposefully different commits.
Truly fantastic. Absurdly, I have no idea how to do this on the command line, though presumably it is possible from there too (just a lot, lot less convenient).
cwillu 18 minutes ago [-]
git add -p or git add ‹file› -p
paustint 2 hours ago [-]
VSCode also allows staging/unstaging specific hunks by hovering over the hunk near the left/right separator in diff view - super handy when I need it!
dahart 43 minutes ago [-]
Git gui does per-line staging, and comes with git…
rbjorklin 2 hours ago [-]
Neogit, Magit inspired, does the same for Neovim. Would recommend!
skydhash 2 hours ago [-]
I think you can do the same with tig and lazyvim. Sometimes you just need interactivity.
BeetleB 2 hours ago [-]
> If you’re not already using git add -p to stage your commits then you’re missing out.
After switching to jujutsu, I assure you I don't miss this feature.
jj takes the opposite approach. It keeps staging things, and you use split whenever you want to separate things out.
(And yes, it stores the staged changes as revisions, so you can always back out to a previous staged state).
hamdingers 2 hours ago [-]
> jj takes the opposite approach. It keeps staging things, and you use split whenever you want to separate things out.
You can use `git reset -p` to selectively unstage hunks the same way if you wanted to.
pmarreck 2 hours ago [-]
I've sadly had to back out of using jj after leaning into LLM coding assistance, as, even with an extremely well-written jj guide in its context (and literally blocking the use of git), it never failed to screw things up more than if I was just using git (I call this an "LLMpedance mismatch" problem)
If LLM coding assistance continues to increase, it's going to be a rather large speed bump to cross
One of the biggest problems is actually unsolvable if you want to keep colocated Git and git tooling around, because it has to do with how jj fundamentally works: detached HEADs, detached HEADs everywhere
You yourself may not use AI, this is for those who do and are interested in switching to jj
BeetleB 2 hours ago [-]
I don't let LLMs make commits for me - git or jj.
OK, OK - I lie. For personal projects I do - some handle jj decently well. But at work I don't let it make any commits ... and it never tries to.
What tools are you using that won't work with detached heads?
jauntywundrkind 45 minutes ago [-]
Glm-5.1+ and gpt-5.5+ seem quite capable. My agents is mostly helping glm with a jj status command it would reliably try but get the quoting wrong on. It's not confused about detached head.
jauntywundrkind 42 minutes ago [-]
I did finally add jj-hunk to my AGENTS.md, and it's now a sizable set of instructions, to my chargrin. I haven't spent the time yet to trim it down but that's coming.
I do think that as nice as jj is, the git add -p and git rebase -i are both still tools that base jj could do much better on, that people rightfully are going to miss & feel absolutely stranded, bereft, alone for when they are not there. They are just very clear. There's other tools in jj ecosystem you can build back up by (jj-hunk for example) but the Great Filter of dev ambition to keep striving on just to get back to the core git basics is deeply winnowing.
natbennett 3 hours ago [-]
In the case of a newly committed file you can add just the file with
git add . -N
And then review the text itself as part of the git add -p workflow
westurner 1 hours ago [-]
TIL about git add -N / --intent-to-add :
git add --intent-to-add .
git diff
git add -p .
## To then reset and keep changes
## these are equivalent:
# git reset .
# git reset --mixed .
ninkendo 2 hours ago [-]
My biggest problem with `add -p` is correcting any patches I added or rejected by accident. Often times I skip through dozens of things I don’t want to add, then realized that last hunk was something I did need. But I can’t re-visit it, I have to start over and try extra hard to not skip past it again.
I wish the j and k shortcuts could revisit hunks I’ve already added/rejected, not just ones I haven’t reviewed yet. On a large set of unstaged changes that you mostly don’t want, it really sucks to “lose your place” in the list of hunks.
topsecret 2 hours ago [-]
From the article, try J and K instead of j and k; that moves to next/previous hunk, not next/previous unreviewed hunk.
ninkendo 56 minutes ago [-]
To you and the sibling commenter:
D’oh. I should have reviewed the docs better, you’re totally right. Now I feel dumb. Wish I would’ve learned this a long time ago. (Or maybe I did and forgot, perhaps multiple times. I’ve used git basically daily since 2006. I’ve forgotten a lot.)
ghrl 2 hours ago [-]
From skimming through the article, isn't that what the uppercase variants do?
goosejuice 3 hours ago [-]
I always use git add -i which is just one level up. The tui is pretty intuitive for day to day tasks, including staging partial chunks or lines of code.
zikohh 3 hours ago [-]
I find splitting hunks a pain. I wish I could just split by line, would be a great feature.
dahart 31 minutes ago [-]
In git gui, you can highlight a line and right-click to stage or unstage just that line. I just googled it and discovered it’s relatively easy to add a keyboard shortcut for it, but I’m not sure how useful that is.
LVB 3 hours ago [-]
Use 'e' in -p mode and you can edit the hunks as you wish, choose lines, etc.
embedding-shape 3 hours ago [-]
The whole "Stage this hunk [y,n,q,a,d,k,K,j,J,g,/,e,p,P,?]?" line is pretty intimidating, but I urge anyone who still wants to understand git and be able to (themselves) use it effectively, to do "?" when you see it, read through what each action does and forcefully try them out to see what they do, in some low stakes project. Ends up being a super quick way of staging a whole bunch of work and avoiding staging other, but it's pretty weird at first glance.
feelamee 2 hours ago [-]
it's not as easy as you said.
it can be tricky and complicated to use edit mode.
I usually use it, but still often don't understand - will this edit succeed or why it is failed.
elevation 2 hours ago [-]
> splitting hunks a pain
Sublime Merge for the win; a fantastic visual interface with context and reversible inputs. Don't leave home without it!
KwanEsq 2 hours ago [-]
Mercurial's `hg commit -i` with the curses interface is so much better for this it's not even funny. Fortunately I'd assume Jujutsu's UX is similar, based on arccy's comment.
petepete 3 hours ago [-]
I've used tig for longer than I can remember for my selective staging needs.
PaulDavisThe1st 1 hours ago [-]
to make the list closer to complete, magit in emacs allows this (Ctrl-space on the line, done).
arccy 3 hours ago [-]
use jj, the default is to select by line
wren6991 2 hours ago [-]
The worst part of this workflow is when you accidentally run `git commit -am` at the end and destroy all of your careful staging.
prideout 3 hours ago [-]
Super useful, and easy to do in the VS Code merge pane.
Topgamer7 4 days ago [-]
I find grepdiff and this function are pretty useful if you want to pull certain hunks out of a large change set:
#!/bin/bash
# Put this into your .bashrc, or whatever.
function git-add-regex {
git diff -U0 | grepdiff -E "$1" --output-matching=hunk | git apply --cached --unidiff-zero
}
IntelliJ has that since 2018, with visual change-by-change checkboxes that should go into each commit, very handy.
wps 60 minutes ago [-]
While I see the utility of partial file commits, I think that it promotes committing untested code. Fossil scm doesn’t have an equivalent feature because of this very issue.
ninkendo 53 minutes ago [-]
Committing untested code doesn’t matter at all. Merging untested code absolutely does. What you commit locally doesn’t need to correspond at all to what is even shown to others, let alone merged.
Sometimes I think the use cases for “version control I use locally on my machine” and “version control that goes up to the public repo and is reviewed” are so wildly different, it’s a wonder we even use the same tool for both.
dahart 45 minutes ago [-]
This isn’t partial commits. It’s partial staging. This does not promote committing untested code. Committing also doesn’t promote a lack of testing, there’s no justification for that assumption.
cerved 3 hours ago [-]
Vin fugitives difftool is even better
Also, you can use -p for stash push
feelamee 2 hours ago [-]
and also for git restore
juliend2 2 hours ago [-]
and also for `git reset`, when you added one thing by mistake.
Rendered at 01:08:12 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
PS: Majutsu provides this too (a magit-like tool for jj)
It releases me from having to have the "discipline" to stay 100% focused on the broader task at hand and say "hmm, I should fix that while I'm here", without co-mingling purposefully different commits.
Truly fantastic. Absurdly, I have no idea how to do this on the command line, though presumably it is possible from there too (just a lot, lot less convenient).
After switching to jujutsu, I assure you I don't miss this feature.
jj takes the opposite approach. It keeps staging things, and you use split whenever you want to separate things out.
(And yes, it stores the staged changes as revisions, so you can always back out to a previous staged state).
You can use `git reset -p` to selectively unstage hunks the same way if you wanted to.
If LLM coding assistance continues to increase, it's going to be a rather large speed bump to cross
One of the biggest problems is actually unsolvable if you want to keep colocated Git and git tooling around, because it has to do with how jj fundamentally works: detached HEADs, detached HEADs everywhere
You yourself may not use AI, this is for those who do and are interested in switching to jj
OK, OK - I lie. For personal projects I do - some handle jj decently well. But at work I don't let it make any commits ... and it never tries to.
What tools are you using that won't work with detached heads?
I do think that as nice as jj is, the git add -p and git rebase -i are both still tools that base jj could do much better on, that people rightfully are going to miss & feel absolutely stranded, bereft, alone for when they are not there. They are just very clear. There's other tools in jj ecosystem you can build back up by (jj-hunk for example) but the Great Filter of dev ambition to keep striving on just to get back to the core git basics is deeply winnowing.
git add . -N
And then review the text itself as part of the git add -p workflow
I wish the j and k shortcuts could revisit hunks I’ve already added/rejected, not just ones I haven’t reviewed yet. On a large set of unstaged changes that you mostly don’t want, it really sucks to “lose your place” in the list of hunks.
D’oh. I should have reviewed the docs better, you’re totally right. Now I feel dumb. Wish I would’ve learned this a long time ago. (Or maybe I did and forgot, perhaps multiple times. I’ve used git basically daily since 2006. I’ve forgotten a lot.)
Sublime Merge for the win; a fantastic visual interface with context and reversible inputs. Don't leave home without it!
Sometimes I think the use cases for “version control I use locally on my machine” and “version control that goes up to the public repo and is reviewed” are so wildly different, it’s a wonder we even use the same tool for both.
Also, you can use -p for stash push