Merging>Basic Merging: What's wrong with git commit -am"message?!?!"

Jamie;

Not entirely sure what you are attempting to accomplish. But, let's look at a couple things.

The -a (--all) command is an option command for, example when you use git commit to tell the command to automatically stage files that have been modified and deleted, but new files you have not told Git about are not affected.

The -m (--message) command uses the given <msg> as the commit message. If multiple -m options are given, their values are concatenated as separate paragraphs.

The git branch command will allow you to work with whatever branches you may have.

If you continue to get stuck, the command line git help is very thorough and informative. If you do a git help add or git help commit it will take you to an html doc that has lots of information about that specific help topic.

Best of luck and if you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to ask!

Hey I just tried out this challenge and I think you are mixing up committing changes in a branch with merging a branch back to the master...

To add a branch use $ git checkout -b name_of_branch

This will switch you into this branch as you create it all at once from this one line

If you already have your branch created you don't need to use this line above. But make sure you select that branch using:

$ git checkout name_of_branch

Next you can make changes in your files using $ nano filename

To commit these changes under your new name_of_branch use $ git commit -m "description of changes"

If you made multiple changes in multiple files use $ git commit -a -m "description of changes"

Then to merge the branches you must revert back to the branch master $ git checkout master

Finally, to merge the branches, simply use $ git merge name_of_branch

git commit -am "message"

is the correct syntax for committing to git. In you're question, you haven't left a space between the -am and double quotes, maybe it's that? Are you referring to a treehouse test or your own local work?