Learn Git: Commit

The term commit is fundamental to how Git functions as a version control system. It is important to first understand what a commit is before learning how to perform the git commit command and how to perform other actions related to commits in Git.

What is a Git commit?

In Git, a commit is a snapshot of your repo at a specific point in time.

To help further understand what a Git commit is, we need to review your Working Directory vs your Staging Directory and how files changes are reflected in your Git repository.

Think of your working directory as your “in progress” working area; here, created or modified files are not yet reflected in your Git repo. Changes made to files in your working directly only exist locally on your machine.

Git Stage Files

In order to apply changes from your working directory to your Git repository, you must first stage them in your staging directory.

From here, your changes can be saved in your repo by performing a Git commit.

Now, each Git commit will represent a snapshot of your repo at that point in time, and all of your commits will come together to form your repository’s history.

Git Workflow

Traditionally, a Git workflow will involve the following steps:

1. Make changes in your working directory
2. Stage changes in your staging directory
3. Commit changes to apply them to your Git repository

OK, now that we’ve answered the question of what is a Git commit, let’s dive into how to Git commit, and the associated actions you can perform with Git commit commands.

Git Status

While you’re going through your workflow, you can always run the git status command to check which files have been staged and exist in your staging directory.

In this example, after the git status command has been performed, you can see that the trial-activation.md file has been modified, in addition to the other two.

How to Git Commit

In order to commit these changes, you will need to stage the changes with the git add command, followed by the name of the file.

git add trial-activation.md

This will stage the trial-activation.md file. Ah, but you’re not done yet! You still need to save the changes to your repository by performing the git commit command.

How do I add a Git commit message?

To add a Git commit message to your commit, you will use the git commit command followed by the -m flag and then your message in quotes. Adding a Git commit message should look something like this:

git commit -m “Add an anchor for the trial end sectionnn.”

How do I amend a Git commit?

Now, if you can see from the example above, there is a typo in the last word. So, how do you make a Git commit message change?

To amend your commit, you’re going to use the git commit command followed by --amend and then the amended Git commit message. It should look something like this:

git commit --amend “Add an anchor for the trial end section.”

Can I add multiple modified files using the Git commit command?

If you have numerous modified files sitting in your working directory, it can be time-consuming to add them one at a time. Speed up the process by using the git commit command followed by the -a flag. This will add all of the modified or deleted files in your working directory to the current commit. It should look something like this:

git commit -a -m “Update trial-activate page with changes from release.”

How to Git Commit in GitKraken

Now that you’re familiar with how to Git commit in the command line, let’s see how the experience compares when working with commits with a Git client, like GitKraken.