Git - Temporarily ignore trivial changes to files

Question

I'm looking for a way to 'hide' minor changes made to a few files in Git, such that they will not show up in git status until a different change is made to those files.

Example: I have a java file where the only change made is the removal of an unused import (a contributor forgot to run an organize imports before committing). Now I have removed that import and the change (obviously) shows up in git. Since I have no other change to make to that file, I don't really like committing the file as part of another (unrelated) change or committing this change stand-alone. Sure, I could revert the change and only applying it whenever I will have to make changes to that file, but I could "risk" forgetting it.

Does a command exists for such a task? It would work somewhat like the assume-unchanged command but in a not permanent way.

What would be the proper way to resolve this if no such command is available?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

In my use case (developing using an edited config file on my personal machine, running on another machine with the unchanged config), this was the solution for me:

start ignoring changes to a file:

git update-index --assume-unchanged path/to/file 

keep tracking again:

git update-index --no-assume-unchanged path/to/file