having magit-file-track

[mmahmoudian]

General idea

I'm proposing to have a function to add untracked files to the git. The name comes from the existing function named magit-file-untrack.

I imagine it works by asking the user to pick a file (similar to C-x C-f) and then staging the file.

[My] Use-case

This function comes handy when user have hidden untracked files (the only way to tame a bare repo especially when used for managing dotfiles):

git config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no

When the untracked files are hidden, there is no way in magit to stage an untracked file, other than jumping to a terminal and use git add path/file and then get to magit and magit-refresh.

[kyleam]

Have you tried magit-stage-file?

magit/lisp/magit-apply.el

Lines 328 to 347 in 0e8f25a

	(defun magit-stage-file (files &optional force)
	"Read one or more files and stage all changes in those files.
	With prefix argument FORCE, offer ignored files for completion."
	(interactive
	(let* ((choices (if current-prefix-arg
	(magit-ignored-files)
	(nconc (magit-unstaged-files)
	(magit-untracked-files))))
	(default (or (magit-section-value-if 'file)
	(magit-file-relative-name)))
	(default (car (member default choices))))
	(list (magit-completing-read-multiple
	(if current-prefix-arg "Stage ignored file,s: " "Stage file,s: ")
	choices nil t nil nil default)
	current-prefix-arg)))
	(magit-with-toplevel
	;; For backward compatibility, and because of
	;; the function's name, don't require a list.
	(magit-stage-1 (and force "--force")
	(if (listp files) files (list files)))))

[mmahmoudian]

@tarsius Thanks for your patience :) I know there is a higher chance that I'm missing something rather than magit.

In one of the screenshots I can see that you are using an absolute path.

Thanks for the response. But I tried it with absolute and also local path and t didn't work

(In the second screenshot, I miss seeing either the Stage ignored file,s: or Stage file,s: prompt. You seem to have invoked something else.)

No, I'm invoking magit-stage-file. The second screenshot is after pressing tab hoping for completion (first sentence of step 4)

But to solve all these complications, I think the best is to have a test environment to demo the issue. create an empty folder and run this to have a git with 1 commit and 2 committed files, and 2 untracked files:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# create some sample files
touch file1 file2 .file3 .file4
# create a git repo here
git init
# hide the untracked files
git config --local status.showUntrackedFiles no
# stage one file of each type
git add file1 .file3
# commit staged files
git commit --message='1st commit'

git log

git ls-files

Then try C-u C-x magit-stage-file and try staging file2 or .file4.

This is what I see in my setup (keycast is enabled in the tab bar at right-top corner):

Kooha-2024-04-02-16-16-46.mp4

Thanks for your time in advance :)

[tarsius]

Then try C-u C-x magit-stage-file and try staging file2 or .file4.

Since these files are not "gitignored", but merely hidden from git status¹, you have to use the "unstaged or untracked" variant of magit-stage-file. In other words: no prefix argument.

For me M-x magit-stage-file lists .file4, file2 and kickstart.sh.

If it still doesn't for you, then test what the various magit-*-files functions, that are used in magit-state-file's interactive form, return. magit-untracked-files is supposed to return the files, I just mentioned.

Footnotes

1. and magit-status, which also respects status.showUntrackedFiles, but that had to be implemented explicitly. ↩

[mmahmoudian]

Thanks. As you mentioned, it brings the files in my example environment although it does not work in bare repos. Also There is a practical issue: the magit-untracked-files returns which is used in magit-stage-file tries to list all the untracked files in the directory (as expected), although it will consume lots of IO when the directory is large (e.g in my case the my whole ~/). In this case I believe a process akin to find-file is more fitting, but as you stated before it "would be harder to implement". I understand that it might not worth the effort.

One last question: Is there any upper-limit to the list returned by (magit-untracked-files)? because the fd --type=f --hidden --search-path=/home/mehrad | wc -l returns 376378 but the following returns only 359551:

(+ (length (magit-untracked-files))
   (length (magit-ignored-files))
   (length (magit-unstaged-files))
   (length (magit-list-files)))

which is 16827 files different. The reason this caught my eye is because I have a file named .toprc which is not listed by magit-stage-file, and I tried to understand the code and wrote this to check (it is find by :

(member ".toprc" (magit-untracked-files))

which results in "no output":

Code block produced no output (took 1.6s).

but fd finds it in the same git repo root:

❯  fd --type=f --hidden '.toprc'
.config/htop/htoprc
.toprc

[tarsius]

In this case I believe a process akin to find-file is more fitting, but as you stated before it "would be harder to implement". I understand that it might not worth the effort.

It's something for the backlog.

Is there any upper-limit to the list returned by (magit-untracked-files)? because the fd --type=f --hidden --search-path=/home/mehrad | wc -l returns 376378 but the following returns only 359551:

Magit does not impose any limit, but git ls-files might. I don't know.

[mmahmoudian]

It's something for the backlog.

Nice, exciting times ahead then 🤗 I might even get my elisp-foo string enough to make a PR (highly unlikely though as I don't know any lisp and I'm working on learning scheme).

Magit does not impose any limit, but git ls-files might. I don't know

Well, my git ls-file | wc -l is 40, but because my bare repo is on my home folder, there are a ton of untracked files. So my guess was some kind of limitation on magit-untracked-files