How to remove only intent-to-add files from index in git?

Question

Is there a way to remove from an index with a single command only those files that have been added with -N flag?

Answer 1

No. Git doesn't keep track of which files were added with -N and which were simply empty.

Answer 2

Yes, there is! Using only git:

git diff --name-only --diff-filter=A -z \
    | git restore --staged -q --pathspec-file-nul --pathspec-from-file=-

Files that are added without their content with -N show up as 'Added' (A) in the work tree, and that is what is listed with --diff-filter=A. This list is then piped into git restore which removes the intent-to-add.

I used git restore because git reset just resets the whole index if there are no files added with -N (because the pathspec is empty). You can also avoid this problem with

git diff --name-only --diff-filter=A -z | xargs -r0 git reset -q --

which requires GNU xargs.