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Git Staging & Committing

Links: 106 Git Index

Why do we have a staging area?

  • A staging step in git allows you to continue making changes to the working directory, and when you decide you wanna interact with version control, it allows you to record changes in small commits.
  • Suppose you have edited three files (a.html, b.html, and c.html). After that you need to commit all the changes so that the changes to a.html and b.html were a single commit, while the changes to c.html were not logically associated with the first two files and were done in a separate commit.

git add a.html
git add b.html
git commit -m "Changes for a and b"

git add c.html
git commit -m "Unrelated change to c"

Separating staging and committing, you get the chance to easily customise what goes into a commit.

Git tracks the changes and not files

  • Git concentrates on the changes to a file, not the file itself.
  • A git add file command does not tell git to add the file to the repository, but to note the current state of the file for it to be committed later.

Example: Git tracks files

  • Suppose you have a file name hello.html you make a first change and then do a git add hello.html
  • Now you make a second change in hello.html.
  • Now if you do a git status you will see the following 
    # On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
#   modified:   hello.html
#
# Changes not staged for commit:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#   modified:   hello.html
  • Note that hello.html is listed in the status twice.
    • The first change is staged and ready for a commit.
    • The second change is unstaged.
    • If you were making a commit right now, second change would not have been saved to the repository.

Checking out older versions

  • When you checkout something you will be in detached HEAD state. You can look around, make experimental changes and commit them, and you can discard any commits you make in this state without impacting any branches by performing another checkout.
  • If you want to create a new branch to retain commits you create, you may do so (now or later) by using -b with the checkout command again.
    • git checkout -b new_branch_name

Last updated: 2022-06-10