How to Stage a Single Line in Git

Sometimes, you might have multiple unrelated changes in a single file. In such cases, you probably don't want to throw them all into the same commit; you'll want to create separate, focused commits.

This is where Git's ability to stage individual lines comes in handy!

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Using Patch Mode to Stage Parts of a File

The magic command for this is git add with the -p (or --patch) flag.

$ git add -p index.html

This will start an interactive session where Git walks you through the "hunks" (a block of changes) in the specified file. For each hunk, Git will ask you what you want to do. You can press "?" to see a list of all available options.

Staging an Entire Hunk

If a hunk contains only changes that you want to commit, you can simply press "y" to stage the entire hunk.

Staging Specific Lines

If you only want to stage some of the lines within a hunk, you can use the "e" option. This will open the hunk in your configured code editor.

In the editor, you'll see the hunk's content. Lines that are being added have a "+" prefix, and lines that are being removed have a "-" prefix. To select which lines to stage, you simply remove the lines you don't want to stage.

For example, if you want to stage only one of three new lines, you would remove the other two lines (the ones prefixed with "+") from the editor.

After you've saved and closed the editor, Git will stage only the lines you kept.

If you run git status after this, you'll see that your file is both staged and unstaged, because it contains both staged and unstaged changes.

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