Tracking Changes

Last updated on 2023-08-16 | Edit this page

Estimated time: 20 minutes

Overview

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 that cycle.
  • Distinguish between descriptive and non-descriptive commit messages.

First let’s make sure we’re still in the right directory. You should be in the recipes directory.

BASH 

$ cd ~/Desktop/recipes

Let’s create a file called guacamole.txt that contains the basic structure to have a recipe. We’ll use nano to edit the file; you can use whatever editor you like. In particular, this does not have to be the core.editor you set globally earlier. But remember, the bash command to create or edit a new file will depend on the editor you choose (it might not be nano). For a refresher on text editors, check out “Which Editor?” in The Unix Shell lesson.

BASH 

$ nano guacamole.txt

Type the text below into the guacamole.txt file:

OUTPUT 

Ingredients
Instructions

Let’s first verify that the file was properly created by running the list command (ls):

BASH 

$ ls

OUTPUT 

guacamole.txt

guacamole.txt contains a single line, which we can see by running:

BASH 

$ cat guacamole.txt

OUTPUT 

Ingredients
Instructions

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

BASH 

$ git status

OUTPUT 

On branch main

No commits yet

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

	guacamole.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:

BASH 

$ git add guacamole.txt

and then check that the right thing happened:

BASH 

$ git status

OUTPUT 

On branch main

No commits yet

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

	new file:   guacamole.txt

Git now knows that it’s supposed to keep track of guacamole.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:

BASH 

$ git commit -m "Create a template for recipe"

OUTPUT 

[main (root-commit) f22b25e] Create a template for recipe
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
 create mode 100644 guacamole.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 f22b25e. Your commit may have another identifier.

We use the -m flag (for “message”) to record a short, descriptive, and specific comment that will help us remember later on 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) statement about the changes made in the commit. Generally, the message should complete the sentence “If applied, this commit will” . If you want to go into more detail, add a blank line between the summary line and your additional notes. Use this additional space to explain why you made changes and/or what their impact will be.

If we run git status now:

BASH 

$ git status

OUTPUT 

On branch main
nothing to commit, working tree 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:

BASH 

$ git log

OUTPUT 

commit f22b25e3233b4645dabd0d81e651fe074bd8e73b
Author: Sarah Robertson <s.robertson@researcher.co>
Date:   Thu Aug 22 09:51:46 2013 -0400

    Create a template for recipe

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 guacamole.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 Sarah adds more information to the file. (Again, we’ll edit with nano and then cat the file to show its contents; you may use a different editor, and don’t need to cat.)

BASH 

$ nano guacamole.txt
$ cat guacamole.txt

OUTPUT 

Ingredients
avocado
lemon
salt
Instructions

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

BASH 

$ git status

OUTPUT 

On branch main
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:   guacamole.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:

BASH 

$ git diff

OUTPUT 

diff --git a/guacamole.txt b/guacamole.txt
index df0654a..315bf3a 100644
--- a/guacamole.txt
+++ b/guacamole.txt
@@ -1,2 +1,5 @@
 Ingredients
+avocado
+lemon
+salt
 Instructions

The output is cryptic because it is actually a series of commands for tools like editors and patch telling them 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; df0654a and 315bf3a 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:

BASH 

$ git commit -m "Add basic guacamole ingredients"
$ git status

OUTPUT 

On branch main
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:   guacamole.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:

BASH 

$ git add guacamole.txt
$ git commit -m "Add basic guacamole's ingredients"

OUTPUT 

[main 34961b1] Add basic guacamole's ingredient
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)

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 relevant research to our thesis. We might want to commit those additions, and the corresponding bibliography entries, but not commit some of our work drafting 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 changeset 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 to take a group photo! 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 the group photo simile, you might get an extra with incomplete makeup walking on the stage for the picture because you used -a!) Try to stage things manually, or you might find yourself searching for “git undo commit” more than you would like!

The Git Staging Area

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 improve our recipe by changing ‘lemon’ to ‘lime’:

BASH 

$ nano guacamole.txt
$ cat guacamole.txt

OUTPUT 

Ingredients
avocado
lime
salt
Instructions

BASH 

$ git diff

OUTPUT 

diff --git a/guacamole.txt b/guacamole.txt
index 315bf3a..b36abfd 100644
--- a/guacamole.txt
+++ b/guacamole.txt
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 Ingredients
 avocado
-lemon
+lime
 salt
 Instructions

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

BASH 

$ git add guacamole.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:

BASH 

$ git diff --staged

OUTPUT 

diff --git a/guacamole.txt b/guacamole.txt
index 315bf3a..b36abfd 100644
--- a/guacamole.txt
+++ b/guacamole.txt
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 Ingredients
 avocado
-lemon
+lime
 salt
 Instructions

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

BASH 

$ git commit -m "Modify guacamole to the traditional recipe"

OUTPUT 

[main 005937f] Modify guacamole to the traditional recipe
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

check our status:

BASH 

$ git status

OUTPUT 

On branch main
nothing to commit, working tree clean

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

BASH 

$ git log

OUTPUT 

commit 005937fbe2a98fb83f0ade869025dc2636b4dad5 (HEAD -> main)
Author: Sarah Robertson <s.robertson@researcher.co>
Date:   Thu Aug 22 10:14:07 2013 -0400

    Modify guacamole to the traditional recipe

commit 34961b159c27df3b475cfe4415d94a6d1fcd064d
Author: Sarah Robertson <s.robertson@researcher.co>
Date:   Thu Aug 22 10:07:21 2013 -0400

    Add basic guacamole's ingredients

commit f22b25e3233b4645dabd0d81e651fe074bd8e73b
Author: Sarah Robertson <s.robertson@researcher.co>
Date:   Thu Aug 22 09:51:46 2013 -0400

    Create a template for recipe

Word-based diffing

Sometimes, e.g. in the case of the text documents a line-wise diff is too coarse. That is where the --color-words option of git diff comes in very useful as it highlights the changed words using colors.

Paging the Log

When the output of git log is too long to fit in your screen, git uses a program to split it into pages of the size of your screen. When this “pager” is called, you will notice that the last line in your screen is a :, instead of your usual prompt.

  • To get out of the pager, press Q.
  • To move to the next page, press Spacebar.
  • To search for some_word in all pages, press / and type some_word. Navigate through matches pressing N.

Limit Log Size

To avoid having git log cover your entire terminal screen, you can limit the number of commits that Git lists by using -N, where N is the number of commits that you want to view. For example, if you only want information from the last commit you can use:

BASH 

$ git log -1

OUTPUT 

commit 005937fbe2a98fb83f0ade869025dc2636b4dad5 (HEAD -> main)
Author: Sarah Robertson <s.robertson@researcher.co>
Date:   Thu Aug 22 10:14:07 2013 -0400

   Modify guacamole to the traditional recipe

You can also reduce the quantity of information using the --oneline option:

BASH 

$ git log --oneline

OUTPUT 

005937f (HEAD -> main) Modify guacamole to the traditional recipe
34961b1 Add basic guacamole's ingredients
f22b25e Create a template for recipe

You can also combine the --oneline option with others. One useful combination adds --graph to display the commit history as a text-based graph and to indicate which commits are associated with the current HEAD, the current branch main, or other Git references:

BASH 

$ git log --oneline --graph

OUTPUT 

* 005937f (HEAD -> main) Modify guacamole to the traditional recipe
* 34961b1 Add basic guacamole's ingredients
* f22b25e Create a template for recipe

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:

BASH 

$ mkdir cakes
$ git status
$ git add cakes
$ git status

Note, our newly created empty directory cakes 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.

  1. 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:

BASH 

git add <directory-with-files>

Try it for yourself:

BASH 

$ touch cakes/brownie cakes/lemon_drizzle
$ git status
$ git add cakes
$ git status

Before moving on, we will commit these changes.

BASH 

$ git commit -m "Add some initial cakes"

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):

The Git Commit Workflow

Choosing a Commit Message

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

  1. “Changes”
  2. “Changed lemon for lime”
  3. “Guacamole modified to the traditional recipe”

Answer 1 is not descriptive enough, and the purpose of the commit is unclear; and answer 2 is redundant to using “git diff” to see what changed in this commit; but answer 3 is good: short, descriptive, and imperative.

Committing Changes to Git

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

  1. BASH 

      $ git commit -m "my recent changes"

  2. BASH 

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

  3. BASH 

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

  4. BASH 

      $ git commit -m myfile.txt "my recent changes"
  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 guacamole.txt noting the rough price of the ingredients.
  2. Create a new file groceries.md with a list of products and their prices for different markets.
  3. Add changes from both files to the staging area, and commit those changes.

First we make our changes to the guacamole.txt and groceries.md files:

BASH 

$ nano guacamole.txt
$ cat guacamole.txt

OUTPUT 

Ingredients
avocado (1.35)
lime (0.64)
salt (2)

BASH 

$ nano groceries.md
$ cat groceries.md

OUTPUT 

# Market A
- avocado: 1.35 per unit.
- lime: 0.64 per unit
- salt: 2 per kg

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

BASH 

$ git add guacamole.txt groceries.md

Or with multiple commands:

BASH 

$ git add guacamole.txt
$ git add groceries.md

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

BASH 

$ git commit -m "Write prices for ingredients and their source"

OUTPUT 

[main cc127c2]
 Write prices for ingredients and their source
 2 files changed, 7 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 groceries.md

bio Repository

  • Create a new Git repository on your computer called bio.
  • Write a three-line biography for yourself in a file called me.txt, commit your changes
  • Modify one line, add a fourth line
  • Display the differences between its updated state and its original state.

If needed, move out of the recipes folder:

BASH 

$ cd ..

Create a new folder called bio and ‘move’ into it:

BASH 

$ mkdir bio
$ cd bio

Initialise git:

BASH 

$ git init

Create your biography file me.txt using nano or another text editor. Once in place, add and commit it to the repository:

BASH 

$ git add me.txt
$ git commit -m "Add biography file"

Modify the file as described (modify one line, add a fourth line). To display the differences between its updated state and its original state, use git diff:

BASH 

$ git diff me.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.
  • Write a commit message that accurately describes your changes.