A Super Helpful Shortcut to Add and Commit to Git at the Same Time

random 2 min 0 comment

More often than not, I work with a very simple Git workflow. Especially for my personal projects where I'm the sole contributor. Where I do not have something that does not need to be tracked, except for of course whatever I have put in .gitigonre.

It's usually goes something like this...

  • Make changes in local repo

  • Add all changes to Git tracker

    git add -A

  • Commit changes

    git commit -m "Some commit message"

What if I Could do Both at the Same Time #

That is a nice thought.

But unfortunately, Git does not have such a command.

However, there are ways you can add it to your workflow.

By using the powerful Git aliases.

Simply add a new alias which combined both got commands into a new aliased command as follows

git config --global alias.add-commit '!git add -A && git commit -m'

Here, add-commit is the new alias and you can now add all changes commit them at the same time as follows

git add-commit "Some commit message"

Caveat for Windows #

If you are on Windows, the alias adding command will fail with a very unhelpful "help" message. It won't tell you what went wrong, except for printing the whole help menu for git config.

The solution?

As silly as it is, just use double quote instead of single ones to wrap the alias as follows

git config --global alias.add-commit "!git add -A && git commit -m"

That's all!