Automatic Staging with Git

Question

I have a git repository and it is doing something I've never seen before and haven't found a solution anywhere. I initialized with git init and added everything with git add * and went on my way now when I try to commit after editing any number of files none are staged for commit so I have to do git add -A which then stages them all for a commit. Is there a way to skip the git add -A step? I have used git with Xcode a lot and never have had to move them from not staged to staged while in the terminal.

Is there a paradigm to the git staging area I am missing? How are you supposed to use it?

Answer 1

You do have to add your changes to the commit, but you can just use:

git commit -a

To add your changes AND commit or

git commit -am 'commit message'

Which is how i usually roll.

Manually adding your changes lets you not commit everything if you dont want to, which I'm sure you can tell is useful sometimes.

Answer 2

Add an alias which will do the add and the commit for you and start using the alias. If you are on Windows, I would have suggested TortoiseGit, which abstracts out the index.