Git commit -a question

Question

What is the difference between:

git commit -m "added a new page"

and

git commit -a -m "added a new page"

I know that the -a option will stage files that have been modified and deleted, but then what does running it without the -a mean?

Thanks for reading.

Answer 1

You have to explicitly stage changes for commitment by using git add or git rm.

If you use the -a flag when doing a commit, git will automatically stage any modified and removed files without you having to explicitly stage them using add or rm, etc.

If you don't specify -a, any files that have been modified or removed, but not explicitly staged using git add or git rm will be ignored in the commit.

http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-commit.html