[git] Git: add vs push vs commit

What is the difference between git add, push and commit?

Just a little confused coming from SVN, where "update" will 'add' stuff, and commit does a "push" and will 'add' as well

There are all different functions within git. Hoping for some explanation from your experience.

I find this image very meaningful :

(from : Oliver Steele -My Git Workflow (2008) )

• git add adds files to the Git index, which is a staging area for objects prepared to be commited.
• git commit commits the files in the index to the repository, git commit -a is a shortcut to add all the modified tracked files to the index first.
• git push sends all the pending changes to the remote repository to which your branch is mapped (eg. on GitHub).

In order to understand Git you would need to invest more effort than just glancing over the documentation, but it's definitely worth it. Just don't try to map Git commands directly to Subversion, as most of them don't have a direct counterpart.

I was confused about what 'add' really does. I just read a very enlightening paragraph from the book Git Pro that I'd like to add here, because it clarifies things

“It turns out that Git stages a file exactly as it is when you run the git add command. If you commit now, the version of benchmarks.rb as it was when you last ran the git add command is how it will go into the commit, not the version of the file as it looks in your working directory when you run git commit. If you modify a file after you run git add, you have to run git add again to stage the latest version of the file:”

Excerpt From: Chacon, Scott. “Pro Git.” Springer, 2009-08-19T00:00:00+00:00. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright.

Very nice pdf about many GIT secrets.

Add is same as svn's add (how ever sometimes it is used to mark file resolved).

Commit also is same as svn's , but it commit change into your local repository.

add tells git to start tracking a file.

commit commits your current changes on your local repository

push pushes you local repo upstream.

git add selects changes

git commit records changes LOCALLY

git push shares changes

add -in git is used to tell git which files we want to commit, it puts files to the staging area

commit- in git is used to save files on to local machine so that if we make any changes or even delete the files we can still recover our committed files

push - if we commit our files on the local machine they are still prone to be lost if our local machine gets lost, gets damaged, etc, to keep our files safe or to share our files usually we want to keep our files on a remote repository like Github. To save on remote repositories we use push

example Staging a file named index.html git add index.html

Committing a file that is staged git commit -m 'name of your commit'

Pushing a file to Github git push origin master