Learn Git in a Day

The Checkpoint Before the Checkpoint

Now let's check the status again:

git status

Git will show:

Untracked files:
  calculator.py

Git sees the file, but it's untracked - Git isn't managing it yet. To include it in our next commit, we need to stage it.

The staging area (also called the index) is like a preparation zone. It lets you choose exactly which changes to include in your next commit, rather than committing everything at once.

This means files in a Git project live in one of three places:

  Working Directory         Staging Area            Repository
  (your files on disk)      (what's queued          (committed
                            for the next commit)