Re: [RFC] A unique way to express "all" (vs "add vs "update") ?

Andreas Ericsson [off-list ref] writes:

Jerome Lovy wrote:
...
But this isn't "commit" at all. It's "git add".

quoted

    (This would allow the typical usage "git commit -u ." which is
    barely longer than the current "git commit -a")

For interface completeness, "git commit -u|--update <files>" could also
exist but would probably be of no use.

To sum up, "all" would be consistently expressed with the <dir> syntax.
"git commit -a" would not mean "--all" anymore. Lastly, a distinction
would be made between "--add" and "--update":
- "git commit -add" would have the same semantics as "git add"

This is bollocks. git commit should commit things. We'll be in some
serious trouble if "git commit -a" stops working the way it has and
starts just adding things to index.

I agree everything you said in your response to Jerome, except
for one thing.

We might want to allow:

	$ git commit untracked.c tracked.c

to internally 'git add' untracked files while making the commit.

Currently you would get:

	$ git commit untracked.c tracked.c
        error: pathspec 'untracked.c' did not match any file(s) known to git.
        Did you forget to 'git add'?

which is usable, safe, and helpful, so changing it to
automatically including it would not help the end user that
much and one could argue that it removes the safety which is a
bad idea.

So, let's not do this; sorry for the noise.