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Development Tools Git Basics Getting Started With Git Committing Changes

Posted by Sauli Laitinen
Sauli Laitinen
5,992 Points

When to use -a in commit?

When should I use -a in commit and when i should not use it?

In other words, what is the difference between:

git commit -a -m "comment"

and 

git commit -m "comment"

2 Answers

Michael Hulet
Michael Hulet
47,913 Points
Michael Hulet
Michael Hulet
47,913 Points

The -a flag tells git to commit all the changes it finds. It essentially allows you to skip ever running git add

Mathew Kurian
Mathew Kurian
4,698 Points
Mathew Kurian
Mathew Kurian
4,698 Points

I had this same question also. So if you create 5 new files and then run "git commit", does it just add all the files?

Michael Hulet
Michael Hulet
47,913 Points
Michael Hulet
Michael Hulet
47,913 Points

Running git commit without staging anything will do nothing. You must either run git add first, or run git commit -a instead