# Committing changes
DescriptionCommands

Stage files for commit

  • Use "git add” to add files to every commit, it’s not a blanket save
  • Use a wildcard * to add all files of the same extension to the staging area
  • Use . to stage all changes ready for commit
  • If you are in the root directory of your repository, git add . and git add -A will have the same effect, staging all changes in the repository. However, if you are in a subdirectory, git add . will only stage changes in that directory and its subdirectories, while git add -A will still stage changes from the entire repository.

git add <FILE_NAME>

git add *.html

git add .

git add -A

Show all changes currently staged for commitgit status
Unstage a file after adding itgit reset HEAD <FILE_NAME>

Commit changes

  • Comments should be in present tense (e.g. "Add comments and update styling")
  • -a stages all changes so you can stage changes and commit with a comment all in one line instead of the separate command git add . but only works on files that are already being tracked, so not that useful for newly added files...
  • --amend allows you to edit the commit e.g. change the comment
git commit -m "<COMMENT>"git commit -am "<COMMENT>"

Change details of the last commit

  • opens an editor by default or add -m to


git commit --amend

git commit --amend -m "<NEW_COMMIT_MESSAGE>"

Change a specific commit and all the following commits

  • ^ use this to get the parent of the commit you want to change
  • --root references the very first commit in a repo

git rebase --interactive <PARENT_OF_COMMIT>

git rebase -i <COMMIT_TO_EDIT>^

git rebase -i --root