Adding and Committing Changes

The Basic Workflow

Every time you want to save your progress in Git, you follow two steps:

# Step 1: Stage your changes
git add <files>
Step 2: Commit with a message
git commit -m "Describe what you did"

Step-by-Step Example

# 1. Create a file
echo "Hello, Git!" > hello.txt
2. Check status — file is "untracked" (red)
git status
3. Stage the file
git add hello.txt
4. Check status again — file is "staged" (green)
git status
5. Commit
git commit -m "Add hello.txt with greeting"
6. Check status — clean!
git status

Staging Multiple Files

# Add specific files
git add file1.txt file2.txt
Add all changed files
git add .
Add all .html files
git add *.html

Writing Good Commit Messages

A commit message should explain what you did and why.

✅ Good Messages

Add navigation bar to homepage
Fix login button not responding to clicks
Update README with installation instructions

❌ Bad Messages

update
fix stuff
asdfgh
changes

The Rule of Thumb

Viewing Your Commits

# See commit history
git log
Compact one-line format
git log --oneline

Example output:

a1b2c3d Add navigation bar
e4f5g6h Fix login button
i7j8k9l Initial commit

Each commit has a unique hash (like a1b2c3d) — its ID.

Summary