Git add -patch... but ignore whitespace changes

Question

I can't seem to find a good way to use git add -p but tell git to ignore all whitespace changes. I don't want to reset my local changes.

The situation: I had all my changes locally, and was grouping them into separate commits. Then I experimented with a minifyer, and overwrote all my css files with their minified version. I tried "un-minifying" everything, but it still messed up the git diff - because there were so many whitespace changes - and I can't seem to get my repo back to a place where I can see the actual changes.

Thank you for your help!

Answer 1

Resetting and readding (recommended)

This is the simplest method. There's no one-line-straight-forward way if you don't want to reset and readd in your working directory. You should do exactly that, here's a good way explained step-by-step:

git diff -w --no-color | git apply --cached --ignore-whitespace && git checkout -- . && git reset && git add -p

git diff -w --no-color creates a diff without terminal formatting and colors

git apply --cached --ignore-whitespace applies the diff ignoring whitepace, and indexes it

git checkout -- . removes the unindexed “whitespace” changes

git reset resets the index to just the non-whitespace changes

git add -p adds the non-whitespace changes in patch mode

(source here)

---

Without resetting

This partially answers your problem, without stashing or resetting. You can "diff and apply" only non-whitespace changes, in a way like this:

git diff -w --no-color | git apply --cached --ignore-whitespace

This is another way, but please notice that patching here is a bit of a mess, you need to buffer and manually change diff removing whitespaces. If you use VIM, here's quick step-by-step commands you can use to bufferize, quickly find, remove and finally apply clean diffs:

:r !git diff -w --no-color this creates a new buffer with your diff

:set ft=diff (optional) use this if you want syntax highlighting

now you need to manually remove what you don't want to stage, then

:w !git apply --cached --ignore-whitespace to apply current fixed diff

and eventually commit this diff with :!git commit -m "your fixed commit"

Here's the first iteration. You need to clear the buffer, read the unstaged changes and repeat:

:bd! | set ft=diff | r !git diff -w --no-color

keep going and, eventually, you'll be left with only whitespace changes to commit.

If you don't want to use VIM:

• dump git diff into a file
• edit the file with your favourite IDE/text editor
• feed the edited file into git apply.
• commit
• repeat until done.

It may not be the fastest way, but it's functional and does the trick if you don't like the first method.

(source and similar question here)