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Mathew Kurian
4,698 PointsWhat's the difference between "git commit" and "git commit -a"?
I know that "git commit -a" tells git to commit all the changes that it finds. But what does git commit do by itself then?
Say I created 3 new files and then ran "git commit -a". Does this effectively act like a "git add" for each of the three files, and then a "git commit" command? In this case, what would happen if I just wrote "git commit"? Would I have to add all the files first?
1 Answer
Chris Shaw
26,676 PointsHi Matthew,
You nailed it, nice one. As you already said git commit would first require you to add files to be staged otherwise when you go to commit your changes you'll get a message saying nothing to commit.
One other thing to note is if you have no need to worry about adding all files upon every commit, you can also join the commit message itself onto git commit -a using the m flag and passing a message within quotes.
git commit -am 'message here'
Happy coding and well done on getting your bearings with git.
