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
Glm-5.1+ and gpt-5.5+ seem quite capable. My agents is mostly helping glm with a jj status command it would reliably try but get the quoting wrong on. It's not confused about detached head.
I did finally add jj-hunk to my AGENTS.md, and it's now a sizable set of instructions, to my chargrin. I haven't spent the time yet to trim it down but that's coming.
I do think that as nice as jj is, the git add -p and git rebase -i are both still tools that base jj could do much better on, that people rightfully are going to miss & feel absolutely stranded, bereft, alone for when they are not there. They are just very clear. There's other tools in jj ecosystem you can build back up by (jj-hunk for example) but the Great Filter of dev ambition to keep striving on just to get back to the core git basics is deeply winnowing.
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.
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. (Or maybe I did and forgot, perhaps multiple times. I’ve used git basically daily since 2006. I’ve forgotten a lot.)
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.
In git gui, you can highlight a line and right-click to stage or unstage just that line. I just googled it and discovered it’s relatively easy to add a keyboard shortcut for it, but I’m not sure how useful that is.
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
}
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.
Committing untested code doesn’t matter at all. Merging untested code absolutely does. What you commit locally doesn’t need to correspond at all to what is even shown to others, let alone merged.
Sometimes I think the use cases for “version control I use locally on my machine” and “version control that goes up to the public repo and is reviewed” are so wildly different, it’s a wonder we even use the same tool for both.
This isn’t partial commits. It’s partial staging. This does not promote committing untested code. Committing also doesn’t promote a lack of testing, there’s no justification for that assumption.
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).
git add -p or git add ‹file› -p
VSCode also allows staging/unstaging specific hunks by hovering over the hunk near the left/right separator in diff view - super handy when I need it!
Git gui does per-line staging, and comes with git…
Neogit, Magit inspired, does the same for Neovim. Would recommend!
I think you can do the same with tig and lazyvim. Sometimes you just need interactivity.
> If you’re not already using git add -p to stage your commits then you’re missing out.
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).
> jj takes the opposite approach. It keeps staging things, and you use split whenever you want to separate things out.
You can use `git reset -p` to selectively unstage hunks the same way if you wanted to.
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
I don't let LLMs make commits for me - git or 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?
Glm-5.1+ and gpt-5.5+ seem quite capable. My agents is mostly helping glm with a jj status command it would reliably try but get the quoting wrong on. It's not confused about detached head.
I did finally add jj-hunk to my AGENTS.md, and it's now a sizable set of instructions, to my chargrin. I haven't spent the time yet to trim it down but that's coming.
I do think that as nice as jj is, the git add -p and git rebase -i are both still tools that base jj could do much better on, that people rightfully are going to miss & feel absolutely stranded, bereft, alone for when they are not there. They are just very clear. There's other tools in jj ecosystem you can build back up by (jj-hunk for example) but the Great Filter of dev ambition to keep striving on just to get back to the core git basics is deeply winnowing.
In the case of a newly committed file you can add just the file with
git add . -N
And then review the text itself as part of the git add -p workflow
TIL about git add -N / --intent-to-add :
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.
From the article, try J and K instead of j and k; that moves to next/previous hunk, not next/previous unreviewed hunk.
To you and the sibling commenter:
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. (Or maybe I did and forgot, perhaps multiple times. I’ve used git basically daily since 2006. I’ve forgotten a lot.)
From skimming through the article, isn't that what the uppercase variants do?
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.
I find splitting hunks a pain. I wish I could just split by line, would be a great feature.
In git gui, you can highlight a line and right-click to stage or unstage just that line. I just googled it and discovered it’s relatively easy to add a keyboard shortcut for it, but I’m not sure how useful that is.
Use 'e' in -p mode and you can edit the hunks as you wish, choose lines, etc.
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.
> splitting hunks a pain
Sublime Merge for the win; a fantastic visual interface with context and reversible inputs. Don't leave home without it!
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've used tig for longer than I can remember for my selective staging needs.
to make the list closer to complete, magit in emacs allows this (Ctrl-space on the line, done).
use jj, the default is to select by line
Super useful, and easy to do in the VS Code merge pane.
The worst part of this workflow is when you accidentally run `git commit -am` at the end and destroy all of your careful staging.
I find grepdiff and this function are pretty useful if you want to pull certain hunks out of a large change set:
https://gist.github.com/smuuf/76bde33d65b3dbbc2411e8519f3e6c...IntelliJ has that since 2018, with visual change-by-change checkboxes that should go into each commit, very handy.
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.
Committing untested code doesn’t matter at all. Merging untested code absolutely does. What you commit locally doesn’t need to correspond at all to what is even shown to others, let alone merged.
Sometimes I think the use cases for “version control I use locally on my machine” and “version control that goes up to the public repo and is reviewed” are so wildly different, it’s a wonder we even use the same tool for both.
This isn’t partial commits. It’s partial staging. This does not promote committing untested code. Committing also doesn’t promote a lack of testing, there’s no justification for that assumption.
Vin fugitives difftool is even better
Also, you can use -p for stash push
and also for git restore
and also for `git reset`, when you added one thing by mistake.