This way the git will know which file to track and which not to. This is done by pushing the selected files to the staging area
Here in this example we add two text files for simplicity:
echo hello > file1.txt
echo hello > file2.txt
Here the message 'hello' is stored in the file using > character
Now with git status we can check which files are tracked and which are not:
On branch master
Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 1 commit.
(use "git push" to publish your local commits)
Changes not staged for commit:
(use "git add/rm <file>..." to update what will be committed)
(use "git restore <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
deleted: hello.py
deleted: playground.ipynb
deleted: readme.md
Untracked files:
(use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
file1.txt
file2.txt
git_project.md
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")
To add the files to the staging area, we need to add the files using:
for single file:
git add file1.txt
for mulitple files, we can add the files in series separated by space or we can use patterns:
git add file1.txt file2.txt
or
git add *.txt
Now after adding we can check the status:
$ git status
On branch master
Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 1 commit.
(use "git push" to publish your local commits)
Changes to be committed:
(use "git restore --staged <file>..." to unstage)
new file: file1.txt
new file: file2.txt
new file: git_project.md
deleted: hello.py
deleted: playground.ipynb
deleted: readme.md
git world >> file1.txt
Note: here the >> character means append the text to the file.
The git statis shows:
$ git status
On branch master
Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 1 commit.
(use "git push" to publish your local commits)
Changes to be committed:
(use "git restore --staged <file>..." to unstage)
new file: file1.txt
new file: file2.txt
new file: git_project.md
deleted: hello.py
deleted: playground.ipynb
deleted: readme.md
Changes not staged for commit:
(use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
(use "git restore <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
modified: file1.txt
modified: git_project.md
Untracked files:
(use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
example.md
Note: Now here there is an important thing to note is that the changes are not staged in the staging area yet. As you can see in the output above. it says the changes are not yet staged.
Hence to stage the changes we need to use git add everytime:
git add file1.txt
This is where make the changes permanent. To Commit the changes we type:
git commit -m "initial commit"
We commit using a -m message attribute and with a message. To main purpose of the message is for our reference. This is when we want to retrieve files of previous versions.
Also sometimes we want to have a detailed message as sometimes the message is not enough to explain the changes. Hence we just type
git commit
and then it will open a file in the vs code, where we can type the message. Once the file is closed the commit is performed.
After this everything in the staging area is cleaned and there is no more changes to be updated.
Output:
$ git commit -m "initial commit"
[master f901f5c] initial commit
7 files changed, 167 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 example.md
create mode 100644 file1.txt
create mode 100644 file2.txt
create mode 100644 git_project.md
delete mode 100644 hello.py
delete mode 100644 playground.ipynb
delete mode 100644 readme.md
Here the git will specify the changes in terms of number of lines inserted and deleted. Also specify which files were added and deleted