Staging Deleted files

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Say I have a file in my git repository called foo.

Suppose it has been deleted with rm (not git rm). Then git status will show:

Changes not staged for commit:

    deleted: foo

How do I stage this individual file deletion?

If I try:

git add foo

It says:

'foo' did not match any files.

Update (9 years later, lol):

This looks like it has been fixed in git 2.x:

$ git --version
git version 2.25.1

$ mkdir repo

$ cd repo

$ git init .
Initialized empty Git repository in repo/.git/

$ touch foo bar baz

$ git add foo bar baz

$ git commit -m "initial commit"
[master (root-commit) 79c736b] initial commit
3 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 bar
create mode 100644 baz
create mode 100644 foo

$ rm foo

$ git status
On branch master
Changes not staged for commit:
    deleted: foo

$ git add foo

$ git status
On branch master
Changes to be committed:
    deleted:    foo

10 s
10

Use git rm foo to stage the file for deletion. (This will also delete the file from the file system, if it hadn’t been previously deleted. It can, of course, be restored from git, since it was previously checked in.)

To stage the file for deletion without deleting it from the file system, use git rm --cached foo

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