Creating a Text File

Create a text file in your project directory so that the working tree is no longer empty. Use the echo command to do this:

'Learning Git is cool!' is the text content to be written to the file. The single quotes are used only for enclosing the text and are not included in the file. By default, the echo command prints text to the terminal, but the output redirection operator > redirects it to the test.txt file.

Now, run the git status command:

There is now a file in the working tree, but it is currently untracked by Git. To make it tracked, add the file to the staging area.

Adding to the Staging Area

The staging area, also known as the "index", is a file which serves as an intermediate step between your working directory and the Git repository itself. It contains information regarding the changes and files which will be included in the next commit.

A commit is a fundamental operation that records changes made to files in your Git repository. Essentially, when you commit, you are creating a snapshot of your project at a particular point in time and store it.

The command to add a file to the staging area is as follows:

git add <file>

<file> should be replaced with the name of the file or its path relative to your project's root directory if the file is located in a specific directory within your project. The command looks as follows for us:

Add the test.txt file to the staging area and then check the status of both the working tree and the staging area:

As you can see, test.txt has been added to the staging area, representing a single change ready to be committed – the addition of a new file. Here is an illustration to make things clear: