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What is the use of Staging area or Indexing in Git?

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From Git’s perspective, there are three areas where the file changes can be kept i.e. working directory, staging area, and repository.

Git Areas

First, you make changes in your project’s working directory stored on your computer file system. All the changes remain here until you add them to an intermediate area called staging area.

You can stage the changes by executing git add . command. This staging area gives you a preview of your next commit and basically lets you fine-tune your commits. You can add or remove changes in the staging area until you are satisfied with the version you are going to commit.

Once you verify your changes and sign off the stage changed, then you can finally commit the changes. Upon commit, they go the local repository i.e. into .git/objects directory.

If you use Git GUI, then you will see the option to stage your changes. In the below screenshot, the file sample.txt is under unstaged changes area which means that it’s in your working directory.

You can select a file and click on ‘stage changed’, then it will be moved in the staging area. For example, the file hello.txt is present in stage changed (will commit) area. You can verify your changes and then do a sign-off, followed by a commit.

Git Staging

Staging is also referred to as indexing because git maintains an index file to keep track of your file changes across these three areas. The files which are staged are currently in your index.

When you add changes to the staging area, then the information in the index gets updated. When you do a commit, its actually what’s in the index that gets committed, and not what’s in the working directory. You can use the git status command to see what’s in the index.

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