With Git, how do I commit a load of deleted files in one go?

Question

I have a load of deleted files I want to commit.

But I don\'t want to type git rm for each one.

If i type git rm . -r it will try and delete everything.

Answer 1

git add -u

Will stage all changes including deletions. This is usually the simplest way forward. You can restrict it to certain paths if this is more suitable.

e.g.

git add -u ProjectX

After doing either you can use the path form of reset to 'unstage' any changes that you didn't want.

git reset -- dontcommitme.txt

To be absolutely sure that you are only staging deletions, you would have to do something like this:

git diff --name-only --diff-filter=D | xargs git rm --

Or if you have access to a GNU xargs and need to copy with whitespace in filenames:

git diff -z --name-only --diff-filter=D | xargs -0 git rm --

Answer 2

git commit -a

should work as long as those are your only changes (it will add all unstaged files and commit).