Commiting changes to a local repo

Prerequisites

Unstaged changes: Changes to a file (modified, moved or deleted) that have not been added to the staging area.
Staged file: A file that has changes ready to be commited. Files are staged using the git add.
Untracked file: A file that has never been staged using git add.

An example routine most developers will follow in a given work-day:

Navigate to the project directory using a unix shell terminal.
Type to see an overview of the state of your repo.
```
 $ git status
```
- If you haven’t made any changes since your last commit, you should see the message “nothing to commit, working tree clean” (try making some changes to a file);
- If no repo exists, you should see the message “fatal: not a git repository”. See: Creating local Git Repositories;
- Otherwise, you should see a list of staged/unstaged/untracked changes.
Stage your changes:
```
 $ git add <relative file path>
```
Note: you can also add all files at once with git add --all or git add . but be careful you don’t add files you son’t want to commit.
git status to double-check your staged changes before you commit (probably listed in green).
Commit your changes:
```
 $ git commit -m "concise description of your changes"
```
If you forget to add the -m "<message>", Git will probably open your default command line file editor (probably Vim) so you can add your change manually (not fun for beginners).
Confirm that you have a clean “working tree”:
```
 $ git status
```
Make some changes to your code and start again at Step 2. You should be committing changes to your local repo at least at the end of a work day/session.