I am constantly commiting or undoing things i try very hard not to do

[net8floz]

Often I grab everything in my tree and then try and select a few items to DESELECT so that they are not part of my group undo or stage operation.

But if i am not 10000000% careful it is possible that a DIRECTORY containing one of my deselected files is still selected.

Example

- Folder 1 [ X ]
-- Folder 2 [ X ]
--- Singular Item [ ]

So now even tho my item is specifically not selected and its the only item in the folder it will get staged anyways. I realise this may be intended but it is a bad design and it messes me up constantly

[DanPristupov]

If you stage a folder, all included items will be staged as well.

I realise this may be intended but it is a bad design and it messes me up constantly

It works the same everywhere. Try to delete a directory in Visual Studio or in Windows Explorer.

[net8floz]

i cannot argue with that but i am not trying to delete a directory i am trying to only stage certain files out of a very big list and it is difficult to do because files that show as UNSELECTED get staged. Things could be improved here so that this does not happen.

[DanPristupov]

i cannot argue with that but i am not trying to delete a directory i am trying to only stage certain files

But same logic should be applied to Discard right? So, if you discard changes in a folder, all changes will be discarded. So example with deletion is absolutely valid.

1. What should happen with subfolder1/file3 if you run git add subfolder1 subfolder1/file1 subfolder1/file2?

2. What should happen with subfolder1/folder3 if you copy subfolder, subfolder1/folder1 and subfolder1/folder2 in Windows Explorer?

3. Can you suggest, what items should be staged in the following cases?

- Folder 1 [x]
-- Item 1 [ ]
-- Item 2 [ ]
-- Item 3 [ ]

- Folder 1 [ ]
-- Item 1 [x]
-- Item 2 [ ]
-- Item 3 [ ]

- Folder 1 [x]
-- Item 1 [x]
-- Item 2 [ ]
-- Item 3 [ ]

- Folder 1 [x]
-- Item 1 [ ]
-- Item 2 [ ]
-- Item 3 [ ]
-- SubFolder 1 [ ]
--- Item 4 [ ]
--- Item 5 [ ]
--- Item 6 [ ]

- Folder 1 [x]
-- Item 1 [ ]
-- Item 2 [ ]
-- Item 3 [ ]
-- SubFolder 1 [x]
--- Item 4 [ ]
--- Item 5 [ ]
--- Item 6 [ ]

- Folder 1 [x]
-- Item 1 [ ]
-- Item 2 [ ]
-- Item 3 [ ]
-- SubFolder 1 [x]
--- Item 4 [ ]
--- Item 5 [x]
--- Item 6 [ ]

- Folder 1 [x]
-- Item 1 [ ]
-- Item 2 [ ]
-- Item 3 [x]
-- SubFolder 1 [x]
--- Item 4 [ ]
--- Item 5 [ ]
--- Item 6 [ ]

[net8floz]

my suggestion is that when a folder is selected all the items inside are then selected. if an item is unselected then the main folder becomes unselected, as only partial items are selected inside the folder. this additional folder state could be shown with a new icon. the folder is either not selected, partially selected, or fully selected.

I believe this is often found in things like installer wizards when configuring what tools you want to install.

at the very least items that will be staged could be flagged with a green mark or something visual so the user knows, hey even tho the thing is not visually selected its still going to be staged.

because again, if it is not visually selected it seems like it wont get staged.