Add all files to a commit except a single file?

Question

I have a bunch of files in a changeset, but I want to specifically ignore a single modified file. Looks like this after git status:

# modified:          


        

Answer 1

Now git supports exclude certain paths and files by pathspec magic :(exclude) and its short form :!. So you can easily achieve it as the following command.

git add --all -- :!main/dontcheckmein.txt
git add -- . :!main/dontcheckmein.txt

Actually you can specify more:

git add --all -- :!path/to/file1 :!path/to/file2 :!path/to/folder1/*
git add -- . :!path/to/file1 :!path/to/file2 :!path/to/folder1/*

For Mac and Linux, surround each file/folder path with quotes

git add --all -- ':!path/to/file1' ':!path/to/file2' ':!path/to/folder1/*'