General
git commit with a pathspec ignored my index and committed the file as it sat on disk
Run this in an empty directory. It takes about fifteen seconds and it is the whole article. $ git init -q . && git config user.email t@t && git config user.name t $ printf 'v1\n' > a.txt && git add . && git commit -qm base $ printf 'v2-staged\n' > a.txt &