git status nothing to commit working directory clean however with changes commited

Question

I found many questions with similar subject  but I didn t found any practical guidance about this issue  why git status informs me nothing to commit  working directory clean  even tough I have made a modification at my local branch   Here are the steps which I followed    git init  On branch master - Initial commit  nothing to commit  create copy files and use  git add  to track   git remote add https   github com username project git git pull origin master touch test git add test git commit -m  Adding file for test purposes only   git status  On branch master - nothing to commit  working directory clean      If I do a git push  the modification is committed to the remote branch  I just want to perform  git status  after my modifications  and receive the information that I have changes on my local branch that must be pushed to the remote branch of the project   Can someone tell me what s going  Straight to the point  please    Thanks in advance SO community

User · Accepted Answer

Your local branch doensn t know about the remote branch  If you don t tell git that your local branch  master  is supposed to compare itself to the remote counterpart  origin master in this case   then git status won t tell you the difference between your branch and the remote one  So you should use   git branch --set-upstream-to origin master   or with the short option   git branch -u origin master   This options --set-upstream-to  or -u in short  was introduced in git 1 8 0   Once you have set this option  git status will show you something like     Your branch is ahead of  origin master  by 1 commit

User · Answer

git status output tells you three things by default    which branch you are on What is the status of your local branch in relation to the remote branch If you have any uncommitted files   When you did git commit   it committed to your local repository  thus  3 shows nothing to commit  however   2 should show that you need to push or pull if you have setup the tracking branch   If you find the output of git status verbose and difficult to comprehend  try using git status -sb this is less verbose and will show you clearly if you need to push or pull  In your case  the output would be something like       master   origin master  ahead 1    git status is pretty useful  in the workflow you described do a git status -sb  after touching the file  after adding the file and after committing the file  see the difference in the output  it will give you more clarity on untracked  tracked and committed files   Update  1 This answer is applicable if there was a misunderstanding in reading the git status output  However  as it was pointed out  in the OPs case  the upstream was not set correctly  For that  Chris Mae s answer is correct

User · Answer

I had the same issue because I had 2  git folders in the working directory  Your problem may be caused by the same thing  so I recommend checking to see if you have multiple  git folders  and  if so  deleting one of them  That allowed me to upload the project successfully

User · Answer

The problem is that you are not specifying the name of the remote  Instead of  git remote add https   github com username project git   you should use   git remote add origin https   github com username project git

User · Answer

Delete your  git folder  and reinitialize the git with git init  in my case that s work   because  git add  command staging the folder and the files in   git  folder  if you close CLI after the commit   there will be double folder in staging area that make git system throw this issue

User · Answer

Small hint which other people didn t talk about  git doesn t record changes if you add empty folders in your project folder  That s it  I was adding empty folders with random names to check wether it was recording changes  it wasn t  But it started to do it as soon as I began adding files in them  Cheers

[git] git status (nothing to commit, working directory clean), however with changes commited

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