Repository, staging and commit

Git keeps the history of a folder. Each commit is a photograph of the files as they were at that moment, and carries a message: what changed, and why. You can go back to any photograph and compare any two. git init turns a folder into a repository.

1git init
2git status
3git add notes.md
4git commit -m "Add meeting notes"
5git log --oneline

A commit is two steps. git add puts a change on the stage: "this goes into the next photograph". git commit photographs what is on the stage. git status tells you what has changed and what is staged; git log shows the history.

The stage exists so that you can choose. If you changed two files and only one is ready, you add only that one; the other waits for the next commit. A good commit tells of one piece of work. Every commit has a short id (like a1b2c3d); it is by that id that you point at it in the history.

Tasks