Why there are two ways to unstage a file in Git?

user_817740 0
Viewed 1280494

Sometimes git suggests git rm --cached to unstage a file, sometimes git reset HEAD file. When should I use which?

EDIT:

D:\code\gt2>git init
Initialized empty Git repository in D:/code/gt2/.git/
D:\code\gt2>touch a

D:\code\gt2>git status
# On branch master
#
# Initial commit
#
# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#       a
nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

D:\code\gt2>git add a

D:\code\gt2>git status
# On branch master
#
# Initial commit
#
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git rm --cached <file>..." to unstage)
#
#       new file:   a
#
D:\code\gt2>git commit -m a
[master (root-commit) c271e05] a
 0 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 a

D:\code\gt2>touch b

D:\code\gt2>git status
# On branch master
# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#       b
nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

D:\code\gt2>git add b

D:\code\gt2>git status
# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
#       new file:   b
#
git-reset git-rm git
14 Answers

In the newer version that is > 2.2 you can use git restore --staged <file_name>. Note here If you want to unstage (move to changes) your files one at a time you use above command with your file name. eg

git restore --staged abc.html

Now if you want unstage all your file at once, you can do something like this

git restore --staged .

Please note space and dot (.) which means consider staged all files.

user_87316740

Just use:

git reset HEAD <filename>

This unstages the file and keeps the changes you did to it, so you can, in turn, change branches if you wanted and git add those files to another branch instead. All changes are kept.

user_11595900

For versions 2.23 and above only,

Instead of these suggestions, you could use git restore --staged <file> in order to unstage the file(s).

user_79432850

Unstaging files (undoing git add)

git restore --staged file.js # Copies the last version of file.js from repo to index

discarding local changes

git restore file.js # Copies file.js from index to working directory

git restore file1.js file2.js # Restores multiple files in working directory

git restore . # Discards all local changes (except untracked files)

git clean -fd # Removes all untracked files

user_124283940
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