warning: You ran 'git add' with neither '-A (--all)' or '--ignore-removal'

Question

I tried to add my files to staging on another branch in git. Basically I have done the following

1. git checkout -b <newBranch>
2. Modified some files in that new branch
3. git add .

But got the following warning (I have not found anything like this in SO and surprisingly on by googling. It is very surprising for me):

warning: You ran 'git add' with neither '-A (--all)' or '--ignore-removal', whose behaviour will change in Git 2.0 with respect to paths you removed. Paths like 'thePathToFileIDeleted' that are removed from your working tree are ignored with this version of Git.

• 'git add --ignore-removal ', which is the current default, ignores paths you removed from your working tree.

• 'git add --all ' will let you also record the removals.

Run 'git status' to check the paths you removed from your working tree.

Does anyone know what does it mean and what should I do in the following situation? My git version 1.8.3.2

Answer 1

It is saying that you should use either git add -A or git add --ignore-removal ., because git add . will have a different behavior in the newer version of git. Since it says the current version will ignore deleted paths, my best guess is that the next version will default to including them.

It wants you to be explicit about what whether you want to stage deleted paths in the current directory.

If you want to add deleted paths, you should use git add -A.

If you do not want to add deleted paths, you should use git add --ignore-removal .

I think it is merely trying to warn you so that you will know that your command will do something unexpected (ie different from now) if you upgrade git, so you can take one of the above two options or just make a note of the coming change and move on, with the understanding that you are currently ignoring deleted paths.