If we want to limit the help to lone liner, I am with Nicolas and Fredrik on this one. Suggesting only "git add ." does not feel helpful. However, because ! test -f "$THIS_INDEX" is such a special case (totally new check-in), we can afford to be verbose if we wanted to, and offer tons of possibilities, say: die 'nothing to commit. You can use "git add file..." to include individual files, or use "git add ." if you want to include all files in the current directory, for your first commit.' But if we want to say "for your first commit" in the message, we should also be checking if HEAD commit really does not exist. - 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