I'm wondering what the best way to commit the removal of a file is. Let's assume that I have a file "foo" in my tree, that I have removed from my working tree (e.g. by using patch -E). git status shows: $ git status # On branch refs/heads/messages # Changed but not added: # (use "git add <file>..." to incrementally add content to commit) # # deleted: foo Ok, so I try to follow the instructions in the message: $ git add foo fatal: pathspec 'foo' did not match any files Ok, so that didn't work. Let's try rm instead: $ git rm foo fatal: pathspec 'foo' did not match any files Hm, something is wrong here. But hey, there's a -f option to rm that claims to prevent the "up-do-date check" $ git rm -f foo fatal: pathspec 'foo' did not match any files Finally, I have to resort to using update-index. $ git update-index --remove foo fatal: pathspec 'foo' did not match any files Since I believe that the idea is to move to an interface where you use e.g. "git add" instead of explicitly mentioning the index, I think this is bad. What could be the correct command for this situation. Some suggestions: $ git add foo $ git add --remove foo $ git rm foo $ git rm -f foo -- David Kågedal - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html