Question

I ran “git status” and listed below are some files that were modified/or under the heading “changes not staged for commit”.
It also listed some untracked files that I want to ignore (I have a “.gitignore” file in these directories).

I want to put the modified files in staging so I can commit them. When I ran “git add .”, it added the modified files AND the files I want to ignore to staging.

How do I add only the modified files and ignore the untracked files if presented with the git status below.

Also, are my “.gitignore” files working properly?

$ git status
# On branch addLocation
# Changes not staged for commit:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#       modified:   someProject/path/domain/viewer/LocationDO.java
#       modified:   someProject/path/service/ld/LdService.java
#       modified:   someProject/path/service/ld/LdServiceImpl.java
#       modified:   someProject/path/web/jsf/viewer/LocationFormAction.java
#       modified:   someProject/war/WEB-INF/classes/message/viewer/viewer.properties
#       modified:   someProject/war/page/viewer/searchForm.xhtml
#
# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#       .metadata/
#       someProject/build/
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

Answer 1

Ideally your .gitignore should prevent the untracked (and ignored) files from being shown in status, added using git add etc. So I would ask you to correct your .gitignore

You can do git add -u so that it will stage the modified and deleted files.

You can also do git commit -a to commit only the modified and deleted files.

Note that if you have Git of version before 2.0 and used git add ., then you would need to use git add -u . (See "Difference of “git add -A” and “git add .”").