Tracking Changes

Overview

Teaching: 20 min
Exercises: 10 min

Questions

• How do I record changes in Git?

• How do I check the status of my version control repository?

• How do I record notes about what changes I made and why?

Objectives

• Go through the modify-add-commit cycle for one or more files.

• Explain where information is stored at each stage of Git commit workflow.

Let’s create a file called ingredients.txt that contains some notes about the ingredients we want. (We’ll use nano to edit the file, but you can use whatever editor you like.)

$ nano ingredients.txt

Type the line below into the ingredients.txt file:

2 eggs
salt

ingredients.txt now contains two lines, which we can see by running:

$ ls

ingredients.txt

$ cat ingredients.txt

2 eggs
salt

If we check the status of our project again, Git tells us that it’s noticed the new file:

$ git status

On branch master

Initial commit

Untracked files:
   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)

	ingredients.txt
nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

The “untracked files” message means that there’s a file in the directory that Git isn’t keeping track of. We can tell Git to track a file using git add:

$ git add ingredients.txt

and then check that the right thing happened:

$ git status

On branch master

Initial commit

Changes to be committed:
  (use "git rm --cached <file>..." to unstage)

	new file:   ingredients.txt

Git now knows that it’s supposed to keep track of ingredients.txt, but it hasn’t recorded these changes as a commit yet. To get it to do that, we need to run one more command:

$ git commit -m "Start our shopping list"

[master bb13e9f] Start our shopping list
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 ingredients.txt

When we run git commit, Git takes everything we have told it to save by using git add and stores a copy permanently inside the special .git directory. This permanent copy is called a ‘commit’ (or ‘revision’) and its short identifier is bb13e9f (Your commit will have another identifier of similar length.)

We use the ‘-m’ flag (for “message”) to record a short, descriptive, and specific comment that will help us remember what we did and why. If we just run git commit without the -m option, Git will launch nano (or whatever other editor we configured as core.editor) so that we can write a longer message.

Good commit messages start with a brief (<50 characters) summary of changes made in the commit. If you want to go into more detail, add a blank line between the summary line and your additional notes.

If we run git status now:

$ git status

On branch master
nothing to commit, working directory clean

it tells us everything is up to date. If we want to know what we’ve done recently, we can ask Git to show us the project’s history using git log:

$ git log

commit 172a2f0d1da2034b94fb3a47ad182bfc04172caf
Author: Matthew <matthew@example.org>
Date:   Thu Aug 3 15:47:15 2017 +0200

    Start our shopping list

git log lists all commits made to a repository in reverse chronological order. The listing for each commit includes the commit’s full identifier (which starts with the same characters as the short identifier printed by the git commit command earlier), the commit’s author, when it was created, and the log message Git was given when the commit was created.

Where Are My Changes?

If we run ls at this point, we will still see just one file called ingredients.txt. That’s because Git saves information about files’ history in the special .git directory mentioned earlier so that our filesystem doesn’t become cluttered (and so that we can’t accidentally edit or delete an old version).

Now suppose we add more information to the ingredients.txt file.

$ nano ingredients.txt
$ cat ingredients.txt

2 eggs
salt
2 sausages

When we run git status now, it tells us that a file it already knows about has been modified:

$ git status

On branch master
Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

	modified:   ingredients.txt

no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

The last line is the key phrase: “no changes added to commit”. We have changed this file, but we haven’t told Git we will want to save those changes (which we do with git add) nor have we saved them (which we do with git commit). So let’s do that now. It is good practice to always review our changes before saving them. We do this using git diff. This shows us the differences between the current state of the file and the most recently saved version:

$ git diff

diff --git a/ingredients.txt b/ingredients.txt
index 075e446..0c5ef26 100644
--- a/ingredients.txt
+++ b/ingredients.txt
@@ -1,2 +1,3 @@
 2 eggs
 salt
+2 sausages

The output is cryptic because it is actually a series of computer readable commands describing how to reconstruct one file given the other. If we break it down into pieces:

1. The first line tells us that Git is producing output similar to the Unix diff command comparing the old and new versions of the file.
2. The second line tells exactly which versions of the file Git is comparing; 075e446 and 0c5ef26 are unique computer-generated labels for those versions.
3. The third and fourth lines once again show the name of the file being changed.
4. The remaining lines are the most interesting, they show us the actual differences and the lines on which they occur. In particular, the + marker in the first column shows where we added a line.

After reviewing our change, it’s time to commit it:

$ git commit -m "Add sausages"
$ git status

On branch master
Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)

	modified:   ingredients.txt

no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

Whoops: Git won’t commit because we didn’t use git add first. Let’s fix that:

$ git add ingredients.txt
$ git commit -m "Add sausages"

[master 29980de] Add sausages
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

Git insists that we add files to the set we want to commit before actually committing anything. This allows us to commit our changes in stages and capture changes in logical portions rather than only large batches. For example, suppose we’re adding a few citations to our supervisor’s work to our thesis. We might want to commit those additions, and the corresponding addition to the bibliography, but not commit the work we’re doing on the conclusion (which we haven’t finished yet).

To allow for this, Git has a special staging area where it keeps track of things that have been added to the current change set but not yet committed.

Staging Area

If you think of Git as taking snapshots of changes over the life of a project, git add specifies what will go in a snapshot (putting things in the staging area), and git commit then actually takes the snapshot, and makes a permanent record of it (as a commit). If you don’t have anything staged when you type git commit, Git will prompt you to use git commit -a or git commit --all, which is kind of like gathering everyone for the picture! However, it’s almost always better to explicitly add things to the staging area, because you might commit changes you forgot you made. (Going back to snapshots, you might get the extra with incomplete makeup walking on the stage for the snapshot because you used -a!) Try to stage things manually, or you might find yourself searching for “git undo commit” more than you would like!

Let’s watch as our changes to a file move from our editor to the staging area and into long-term storage. First, we’ll add another line to the file:

$ nano ingredients.txt
$ cat ingredients.txt

2 eggs
salt
2 sausages
butter

$ git diff

diff --git a/ingredients.txt b/ingredients.txt
index 0c5ef26..fd4db14 100644
--- a/ingredients.txt
+++ b/ingredients.txt
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
 2 eggs
 salt
 2 sausages
+butter

So far, so good: we’ve added one line to the end of the file (shown with a + in the first column). Now let’s put that change in the staging area and see what git diff reports:

$ git add ingredients.txt
$ git diff

There is no output: as far as Git can tell, there’s no difference between what it’s been asked to save permanently and what’s currently in the directory. However, if we do this:

$ git diff --staged

diff --git a/ingredients.txt b/ingredients.txt
index 0c5ef26..fd4db14 100644
--- a/ingredients.txt
+++ b/ingredients.txt
@@ -1,3 +1,4 @@
 2 eggs
 salt
 2 sausages
+butter

it shows us the difference between the last committed change and what’s in the staging area. Let’s save our changes:

$ git commit -m "Add butter"

[master e744ac7] Add butter
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

check our status:

$ git status

On branch master
nothing to commit, working directory clean

and look at the history of what we’ve done so far:

$ git log

commit e744ac7a2605fa15d55f75b0f5e00b61e756d815
Author: Matthew <matthew@example.org>
Date:   Thu Aug 3 15:51:22 2017 -0400

    Add butter

commit 29980dee91ca6b5588153a22598aafddc1a55bc2
Author: Matthew <matthew@example.org>
Date:   Thu Aug 3 15:49:06 2017 -0400

    Add sausages

commit 172a2f0d1da2034b94fb3a47ad182bfc04172caf
Author: Matthew <matthew@example.org>
Date:   Thu Aug 3 15:47:15 2017 -0400

    Start our shopping list

Directories

Two important facts you should know about directories in Git.

1. Git does not track directories on their own, only files within them. Try it for yourself:

$ mkdir directory
$ git status
$ git add directory
$ git status

Note, our newly created empty directory directory does not appear in the list of untracked files even if we explicitly add it (via git add) to our repository. This is the reason why you will sometimes see .gitkeep files in otherwise empty directories. Unlike .gitignore, these files are not special and their sole purpose is to populate a directory so that Git adds it to the repository. In fact, you can name such files anything you like.

2. If you create a directory in your Git repository and populate it with files, you can add all files in the directory at once by:

git add <directory-with-files>

To recap, when we want to add changes to our repository, we first need to add the changed files to the staging area (git add) and then commit the staged changes to the repository (git commit):

Choosing a Commit Message

Which of the following commit messages would be most appropriate for the last commit made to ingredients.txt?

1. “Changes”
2. “Added line ‘butter’ as last line of ingredients.txt”
3. “Add butter”

Solution

Answer 1 is not descriptive enough, and answer 2 is too descriptive and redundant, but answer 3 is good: short but descriptive.

Committing Changes to Git

Which command(s) below would save the changes of myfile.txt to my local Git repository?

1. $ git commit -m "my recent changes"

2. $ git init myfile.txt $ git commit -m "my recent changes"

3. $ git add myfile.txt $ git commit -m "my recent changes"

4. $ git commit -m myfile.txt "my recent changes"

Solution

1. Would only create a commit if files have already been staged.
2. Would try to create a new repository.
3. Is correct: first add the file to the staging area, then commit.
4. Would try to commit a file “my recent changes” with the message myfile.txt.

Committing Multiple Files

The staging area can hold changes from any number of files that you want to commit as a single snapshot.

1. Add some text to ingredients.txt with your favorite additional ingredient
2. Create a new file methods.txt describing what to do with all the ingredients
3. Add changes from both files to the staging area, and commit those changes

Solution

First we make our changes to the ingredients.txt and methods.txt files:

$ nano ingredients.txt
$ cat ingredients.txt

2 eggs
salt
2 sausages
butter
pepper

$ nano methods.txt
$ cat methods.txt

1. Fry both eggs and use a bit of salt
2. Fry the sausages too, in the butter
3. Add pepper to taste

Now you can add both files to the staging area. We can do that in one line:

$ git add ingredients.txt methods.txt

Or with multiple commands:

$ git add ingredients.txt
$ git add methods.txt

Now the files are ready to commit. You can check that using git status. If you are ready to commit use:

$ git commit -m "Update with pepper and instructions"

[master f237e9f] Update with pepper and instructions
2 files changed, 6 insertions(+)
create mode 100644 methods.txt

Key Points

• git status shows the status of a repository.

• Files can be stored in a project’s working directory (which users see), the staging area (where the next commit is being built up) and the local repository (where commits are permanently recorded).

• git add puts files in the staging area.

• git commit saves the staged content as a new commit in the local repository.

• Always write a log message when committing changes.