Undo git rm . -r --cached or commit changes?

Question

I was trying to make my .gitingore work (Link to the question :) ).

I have just done

git rm . -r --cached 

and now I have a whole list of deleted files when I enter:

git status -s 

Is this normal? Can i safetly commit all my changes?

Or maybe there is a way to undo this command?

PS: I was trying to understand what this command do but i've only found this: http://brianloomis.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/git-rm-r-cached/ And it's not so clear to me.

PS 2: OK :) To save my skin I've made a reset:

git reset HEAD *

The DELETED files went bye bye :) There are no longer visible in git status -s . But still is it safe to do the command:

git rm . -r --cached and then add and commit it? 

Answer 1

"safe"? What it does is empty the index and commit the deletion of those files, without removing them from the working tree (your disk)

That means all those files become un-tracked (private).

Usually, you don't commit after such a command. You reset (as you did).
That can force content drivers (like a smudge script) or other .gitattributes directives to be applied again on all files.

You can see that command used in the GitHub help page "Dealing with line endings".

git rm --cached -r .
# Remove everything from the index.

git reset --hard
# Write both the index and working directory from git's database.

Again, in this case: no commit, only a reset.