Re: Please default to 'commit -a' when no changes were added

Jonathan Nieder [off-list ref] writes:

Hi again,

Goswin von Brederlow wrote:

quoted

so far two people have suggested an alias
for this and both have completly failed to achived the desired result.

I had thought Adam already suggested using ‘git diff-index --cached
--quiet HEAD’ [1].

You can do so like this:

cat <<-EOF >$HOME/bin/git-ci
#!/bin/sh
cleanindex() { git diff-index --cached --quiet HEAD; }

Thanks. That is the missing test.

if test "$1" != "-h"
then
	echo >&2 usage: git ci &&
	exit 129
fi
if test "$#" != 0
then
	echo >&2 Please use git commit directly.
	if cleanindex
	then
		echo >&2 '(no staged changes)'
	else
		git diff --cached --name-status
	fi
	exit 129
fi
if cleanindex
then
	exec git commit -a
else
	exec git commit
fi
EOF
chmod +x $HOME/bin/git-ci

But dense as I am, I still can’t imagine why

echo '[alias] ci = commit -a' >>$HOME/.gitconfig

wouldn’t be better in every way (especially if Jakub’s
commit.preserveindex is enabled).

Because with the above test it knows when -a is wrong and won't use it.

quoted

If you know of a test to check if an index exists or not, preferably one
that does consider new files being added or files being removed as
"index exists", then please do speak up.

test -e .git/index

I know, not what you meant.  But the condition you are looking for is
“staged content does not match the last commit”, not “the tool has
suddenly entered a different mode”.

Hope that helps,
Jonathan

[1] Well, he did:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.bugs.general/698001/focus=145581

Must have overlooked that mail, sorry.