Reference Guide: Committing Changes

Welcome back for part three of my reference guide series.

• Go here for Part One: Reference Guide: Common Commands for Terminal.
• Go here for Part two Create a GitHub Repository

COMMITTING CHANGES
When building a new application, a best practice for web development is to code a few lines, test a few lines, then commit changes. The commit process is the equivalent of saving changes to a document by clicking the save icon.

To commit file changes start by entering the following commands in the terminal:

• git status
  • Items that appear in red indicate the files and subsequent changes are not being tracked. These files need to be staged and submitted.

• git add –A
  • This command initiates changes being tracked and the A indicates all files. This also transitions the code to be staged.
• git status
  • Repeating this command will show the files previously highlighted in red have switched to green indicating changes have been tracked, saved and ready to push to the repository.

• git commit –m “add comment description of changes made”
  • Staged code is now saved locally with a note to others about the code. Makes commit messages descriptive and meaningful.
• git status
  • Repeat command to verify all changes have been staged and ready to push to the repository.
• git push origin master
  • Pushing to the master branch is something that should be limited to the first commit of a project repository.
  • Repositories with multiple collaborators should always have the master branch protected with changes being pushed to a branch then pulled into the master by creating a pull request.

Up next: Committing changes with branches.

For the completed Reference Guide Series:

• Part One: Reference Guide: Common Commands for Terminal.
• Part two: Create a GitHub Repository
• Part three: Committing Changes
• Part four: Committing Changes with Branches -Part five: Merge Conflicts
• Part six: Pull Requests
• Part seven: Conducting a Code Review -Part eight: Complete and Merge a Pull Request