In git, I usually prefer to not use the staging area very much, and just work with my working tree. Call me crazy, but I don’t get much use out of this extra step before committing, etc., of adding all the files to a staging area, then running git commit.

So whenever I want to create a new commit, I run git add -A && git commit ...

But git add -A is so slow! On my repo, it’s taking 5-10 seconds to run!

I’ve noticed that git status is much faster – usually less than 1 second.

1. Why is git add -A so much slower? Since a regular git add is pretty fast, I always assumed what makes git add -A so slow is enumerating all the untracked files. But git status also has to do that, and it’s fast.

2. Can I get the same effect as git add -A, but faster, by running git status and piping the output to git add? Something like (this won’t be totally correct): git status -s | cut -d ' ' -f 2 | git add. Is there something else that git add -A is doing that I’m missing, and I’d have problems going this route?