git status: Checking the status of your files

In this post, I am going to explain how to check the status of your files in git repository using ‘git status’ command.

Create a repository

Create a directory HelloWorld and execute 'git init' command to make this as a git repository.

C:\Users\Public\gitDemos\HelloWorld>git init
Initialized empty Git repository in C:/Users/Public/gitDemos/HelloWorld/.git/

When you execute the command ‘git status’, you can see below kind of messages.

C:\Users\Public\gitDemos\HelloWorld>git status
On branch master

No commits yet

nothing to commit (create/copy files and use "git add" to track)

As you see the above messages, git is saying that you are in master branch and no commits are happened yet.

Add new file to the HelloWorld repository

Create a file ‘readMe.txt’ in the HelloWorld repository.

Execute ‘git status’ command.

C:\Users\Public\gitDemos\HelloWorld>git status
On branch master

No commits yet

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

        readMe.txt

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

As you see above output, git says, there is one untracked file readMe.txt.

Untracked file: Untracked file is the one, which is not in previous snapshot. To track the untracked files, you need to run ‘git add <FILE_NAME>’ command.

Tracking New files

Use the command 'git add <FILE_NAME> to track the untracked (or) new files.

C:\Users\Public\gitDemos\HelloWorld>git add readMe.txt

C:\Users\Public\gitDemos\HelloWorld>git status
On branch master

No commits yet

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

        new file:   readMe.txt

As you see above snippet, I asked git to track the file ‘readMe.txt’ using add command. When I execute ‘git add’ command, it is moved to staging area.

Committing your changes

Execute the command ‘git commit’ to commit the changes to git repository.

When you execute ‘git commit’ command, it opens an editor of your choice (At the time of git installation, you can specify this).

Enter some information like ‘Adding readMe.txt file to HelloWorld repository’

Save the commit message (CTRL + S).

Close the editor.

You can see below messages in console.

C:\Users\Public\gitDemos\HelloWorld>git commit
[master (root-commit) f1763f8] Adding readMe.txt file to HelloWorld repository
 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 readMe.txt

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