What does "Changes not staged for commit" mean

Question

I thought if you want to track the files you should `git add [files you want to track]` I don't know why I got the messages `Changes not staged for commit`. If those files were not staged, shouldn't `git` shows me those files were `Untracked` like that All I've done was create a new feature from `develop` branch and worked in `feature/change_excel_format` branch I thought Those files should be in `staged` status, But `git status` told me `Changes not staged for commit` To brief, I only know there are 3 stages in git `untracked`, `staged`, `committed` Can any one tell me , what was the stage in for `Changes not staged for commit` So if I modified the file `a` (already in the repo) and type `git st` , the git will tell me `Changes not staged for commit` if I `git a` then the file `a` will be in `staged status` if I modified the `file a` now, there will be two status of `file a` in `git`, right ? So I have to decide if make the `staged a` be commit or make the `not stage a` to be staged,…

Accepted Answer

when you change a file which is already in the repository, you have to `git add` it again if you want it to be staged.

This allows you to commit only a subset of the changes you made since the last commit. For example, let's say you have file `a`, file `b` and file `c`. You modify file `a` and file `b` but the changes are very different in nature and you don't want all of them to be in one single commit. You issue

```
git add a
git commit a -m "bugfix, in a"
git add b
git commit b -m "new feature, in b"
```

As a side note, if you want to commit everything you can just type

```
git commit -a
```

What does "Changes not staged for commit" mean

Solution

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