How do I commit only some files?

I suppose you want to commit the changes to one branch and then make those changes visible in the other branch. In git you should have no changes on top of HEAD when changing branches.

You commit only the changed files by:

git commit [some files]

Or if you are sure that you have a clean staging area you can

git add [some files]       # add [some files] to staging area
git add [some more files]  # add [some more files] to staging area
git commit                 # commit [some files] and [some more files]

If you want to make that commit available on both branches you do

git stash                     # remove all changes from HEAD and save them somewhere else
git checkout <other-project>  # change branches
git cherry-pick <commit-id>   # pick a commit from ANY branch and apply it to the current
git checkout <first-project>  # change to the other branch
git stash pop                 # restore all changes again

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Get a list of files you want to commit

$ git status

Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

modified:   file1
modified:   file2
modified:   file3
modified:   file4

Add the files to staging

$ git add file1 file2

Check to see what you are committing

$ git status

Changes to be committed:
  (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)

    modified:   file1
    modified:   file2

Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

    modified:   file3
    modified:   file4

Commit the files with a commit message

$ git commit -m "Fixed files 1 and 2"

If you accidentally commit the wrong files

$ git reset --soft HEAD~1

If you want to unstage the files and start over

$ git reset

Unstaged changes after reset:
M file1
M file2
M file3
M file4

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You can commit some updated files, like this:

git commit file1 file2 file5 -m "commit message"

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Some of this seems "incomplete"

Groups of people are NOT going to know if they should use quotes etc..

Add 1 specific file showing the location paths as well

git add JobManager/Controllers/APIs/ProfileApiController.cs

Commit (remember, commit is local only, it is not affecting any other system)

git commit -m "your message"  

Push to remote repo

git push  (this is after the commit and this attempts to Merge INTO the remote location you have instructed it to merge into)

Other answer(s) show the stash etc. which you sometimes will want to do

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Suppose you made changes to multiple files, like:

File1

File2

File3

File4

File5

But you want to commit only changes of File1 and File3.

There are two ways for doing this:

1.Stage only these two files, using:

git add file1 file3

then, commit

git commit -m "your message"

then push,

git push

2.Direct commit

git commit file1 file3 -m "your message"

then push,

git push

Actually first method is useful in case if we are modifying files regularly and staging them --> Large Projects, generally Live projects. But if we are modifying files and not staging them then we can do direct commit --> Small projects

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If you have already staged files, simply unstage them:

git reset HEAD [file-name-A.ext] [file-name-B.ext]

Then add them bit by bit back in.

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I think you may also use the command line :

git add -p

This allows you to review all your uncommited files, one by one and choose if you want to commit them or not.

Then you have some options that will come up for each modification: I use the "y" for "yes I want to add this file" and the "n" for "no, I will commit this one later".

Stage this hunk [y,n,q,a,d,K,g,/,e,?]?

As for the other options which are ( q,a,d,K,g,/,e,? ), I'm not sure what they do, but I guess the "?" might help you out if you need to go deeper into details.

The great thing about this is that you can then push your work, and create a new branch after and all the uncommited work will follow you on that new branch. Very useful if you have coded many different things and that you actually want to reorganise your work on github before pushing it.

Hope this helps, I have not seen it said previously (if it was mentionned, my bad)

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This is a simple approach if you don't have much code changes:

1. git stash
2. git stash apply
3. remove the files/code you don't want to commit
4. commit the remaining files/code you do want

Then if you want the code you removed (bits you didn't commit) in a separate commit or another branch, then while still on this branch do:

5. git stash apply
6. git stash

With step 5 as you already applied the stash and committed the code you did want in step 4, the diff and untracked in the newly applied stash is just the code you removed in step 3 before you committed in step 4.

As such step 6 is a stash of the code you didn't [want to] commit, as you probably don't really want to lose those changes right? So the new stash from step 6 can now be committed to this or any other branch by doing git stash apply on the correct branch and committing.

Obviously this presumes you do the steps in one flow, if you stash at any other point in these steps you'll need to note the stash ref for each step above (rather than just basic stash and apply the most recent stash).

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