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Development Tools Git Basics Getting Started With Git The Staging Area

Does git commit -a also include files that have never been added to the staging area?

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2 Answers

Gabbie Metheny
Gabbie Metheny
33,778 Points

If a file has never been added to the staging area, it is untracked, and the -a flag will not add and commit the changes. (You can run git status to see if the file shows as "untracked.") If you do want to add it, run git add <filename> and then commit as normal. Once that file is tracked, the -a flag will add it to the staging area, if git finds any changes since the last commit.

(more in this stack overflow post on all the ways to add, or ignore, untracked files)

Git commit -a commits all changes that have been made. So yes, it includes files that have not been added to the staging area