Magit allows selective staging/unstaging, either of hunks, or by selecting lines (AKA Emacs's "region"). I avoid staging from the git commandline, unless I'm just doing whole files.
PS: Majutsu provides this too (a magit-like tool for jj)
The per-line staging in magit is a frequent tool I use. I can be in the middle of bunch of other changes, change 1 line for a different reason that would otherwise be "mid-hunk", and the stage & commit it with its own explanation.
It releases me from having to have the "discipline" to stay 100% focused on the broader task at hand and say "hmm, I should fix that while I'm here", without co-mingling purposefully different commits.
Truly fantastic. Absurdly, I have no idea how to do this on the command line, though presumably it is possible from there too (just a lot, lot less convenient).
I've sadly had to back out of using jj after leaning into LLM coding assistance, as, even with an extremely well-written jj guide in its context (and literally blocking the use of git), it never failed to screw things up more than if I was just using git (I call this an "LLMpedance mismatch" problem)
If LLM coding assistance continues to increase, it's going to be a rather large speed bump to cross
One of the biggest problems is actually unsolvable if you want to keep colocated Git and git tooling around, because it has to do with how jj fundamentally works: detached HEADs, detached HEADs everywhere
You yourself may not use AI, this is for those who do and are interested in switching to jj
While I see the utility of partial file commits, I think that it promotes committing untested code. Fossil scm doesn’t have an equivalent feature because of this very issue.
My biggest problem with `add -p` is correcting any patches I added or rejected by accident. Often times I skip through dozens of things I don’t want to add, then realized that last hunk was something I did need. But I can’t re-visit it, I have to start over and try extra hard to not skip past it again.
I wish the j and k shortcuts could revisit hunks I’ve already added/rejected, not just ones I haven’t reviewed yet. On a large set of unstaged changes that you mostly don’t want, it really sucks to “lose your place” in the list of hunks.
I always use git add -i which is just one level up. The tui is pretty intuitive for day to day tasks, including staging partial chunks or lines of code.
The whole "Stage this hunk [y,n,q,a,d,k,K,j,J,g,/,e,p,P,?]?" line is pretty intimidating, but I urge anyone who still wants to understand git and be able to (themselves) use it effectively, to do "?" when you see it, read through what each action does and forcefully try them out to see what they do, in some low stakes project. Ends up being a super quick way of staging a whole bunch of work and avoiding staging other, but it's pretty weird at first glance.
it's not as easy as you said.
it can be tricky and complicated to use edit mode.
I usually use it, but still often don't understand - will this edit succeed or why it is failed.
Mercurial's `hg commit -i` with the curses interface is so much better for this it's not even funny. Fortunately I'd assume Jujutsu's UX is similar, based on arccy's comment.
I find grepdiff and this function are pretty useful if you want to pull certain hunks out of a large change set:
#!/bin/bash
# Put this into your .bashrc, or whatever.
function git-add-regex {
git diff -U0 | grepdiff -E "$1" --output-matching=hunk | git apply --cached --unidiff-zero
}
PS: Majutsu provides this too (a magit-like tool for jj)
It releases me from having to have the "discipline" to stay 100% focused on the broader task at hand and say "hmm, I should fix that while I'm here", without co-mingling purposefully different commits.
Truly fantastic. Absurdly, I have no idea how to do this on the command line, though presumably it is possible from there too (just a lot, lot less convenient).
After switching to jujutsu, I assure you I don't miss this feature.
jj takes the opposite approach. It keeps staging things, and you use split whenever you want to separate things out.
(And yes, it stores the staged changes as revisions, so you can always back out to a previous staged state).
You can use `git reset -p` to selectively unstage hunks the same way if you wanted to.
If LLM coding assistance continues to increase, it's going to be a rather large speed bump to cross
One of the biggest problems is actually unsolvable if you want to keep colocated Git and git tooling around, because it has to do with how jj fundamentally works: detached HEADs, detached HEADs everywhere
You yourself may not use AI, this is for those who do and are interested in switching to jj
OK, OK - I lie. For personal projects I do - some handle jj decently well. But at work I don't let it make any commits ... and it never tries to.
What tools are you using that won't work with detached heads?
git add . -N
And then review the text itself as part of the git add -p workflow
I wish the j and k shortcuts could revisit hunks I’ve already added/rejected, not just ones I haven’t reviewed yet. On a large set of unstaged changes that you mostly don’t want, it really sucks to “lose your place” in the list of hunks.
D’oh. I should have reviewed the docs better, you’re totally right. Now I feel dumb. Wish I would’ve learned this a long time ago.
Sublime Merge for the win; a fantastic visual interface with context and reversible inputs. Don't leave home without it!
Also, you can use -p for stash push