Can I edit the staging area in Git directly?-CodePudding

Are the staged files in Git stored somewhere so that I can edit them manually, without using Git commands? For example, can I open staged files in an editor and change what is staged, or delete entire files that are staged or add new ones (if I want to make files be deleted or added in the next commit), without changing modifying my working directory?

CodePudding user response：

Are the staged files in Git stored somewhere

Yes, in .git/objects where the entire repository is stored. Locally-added new content starts out lightly compressed and internally type-tagged in .git/objects/?? where ?? is the first two digits of its id, and the filename in that directory is the rest of the id.

so that I can edit them manually, without using Git commands?

No. The git repository is a content-addressable database, different content has a different id. What you can do is what all the editor plugins that let you edit staged files do: use any equivalent of git cat-file -p :path/to/file to decompress the content staged at that path somewhere handy, edit it as you please, then some equivalent of (keyboard-to-editbox warning) git update-index --cacheinfo 100644,$(git hash-object -w --path path/to/file somewhere.handy),path/to/file to add the edited content to the repo and update the index entry.

For example, can I open staged files in an editor and change what is staged, or delete entire files that are staged or add new ones (if I want to make files be deleted or added in the next commit), without changing modifying my working directory?

As mentioned above, every decent editor has plugins that already do the above ritual to accomplish exactly this, and for people stuck without a decent editor plugin there's git gui which comes with Git and does the same thing but less wonderfully than a real editor could.

CodePudding user response：

No, or at least not easily. Staged files are stored in format your editor would not understand - see for yourself in .git/index and .git/objects. Consider staging index a format internal to Git and manipulate it only with Git client (be it command line client or some library).