Git Commands

Question

What does this command exactly do? - 

git commit -a -m "message"

Answer 1

This command basically adds all your changes and commits it to your github repo with a commit message. 

You can also do the same in two separate steps(which is preferable)

$git add .
$git commit -m "message"

Answer 2

To answer this question the best way possible you need to understand two concepts -Indexing & Committing.

Indexing: After you have created a new file or made changes to it, you need to move it from the working directory to the index.

For that, we use git add <file name>

Or, git add -A (-A means add all files that are in the working directory)

Committing: After you have added them to the index, it is ready to get committed.

For that, we use git commit -m “message”

Or, git commit -a -m “message” (-a means add all modified files in the index)