Git, what if you forgot to add a file to a commit?
This is common, you commit something but realize you forgot to include a specific file, maybe because you forgot to run git add to stage it.
No worries - you can use git commit --amend to take the previous commit, “undo” it, apply all that’s currently staged, and then commit again:
git add file-forgotten.txt
git commit --amend
If you need, you can also change the commit message while you’re adding the file, using the -m option:
git commit --amend -m "New commit message"
As with any operation that rewrites the history, I would only use it if you are working on a local branch, or if you are 100% sure no one else is working on the same branch.
→ I wrote 17 books to help you become a better developer:
- C Handbook
- Command Line Handbook
- CSS Handbook
- Express Handbook
- Git Cheat Sheet
- Go Handbook
- HTML Handbook
- JS Handbook
- Laravel Handbook
- Next.js Handbook
- Node.js Handbook
- PHP Handbook
- Python Handbook
- React Handbook
- SQL Handbook
- Svelte Handbook
- Swift Handbook
Also, JOIN MY CODING BOOTCAMP, an amazing cohort course that will be a huge step up in your coding career - covering React, Next.js - next edition February 2025