I do use it, but that still qualifies as having to "futz[...] around with the index":
> -a, --all
> Tell the command to automatically stage files that have been modified and deleted, but new files you have not told Git about are not affected.
But this wasn't supposed to be a Git vs Mercurial post. It was supposed to be a GitHub vs sanity one, where Git-based solutions exist in the latter, too, which is why I mentioned use of Git outside of GitHub.
