Commits

Committing is the act of recording changes to a version control repository, representing a snapshot of the project at a moment in time. In Git, a commit is an object that includes a tree reference (the snapshot of the file contents), zero or more parent commits, and metadata such as author, committer, and a commit message. The commit also has a unique hash, computed from its contents, metadata, and ancestry, which provides integrity and identity.

A commit represents a directed edge from its parent(s) to the new state, forming a directed acyclic graph of history. Each branch in a repository is a pointer to a commit; moving the branch pointer advances history. The changes included in a commit are produced by staging edits (the index) and then recording them with git commit. Committing creates a new node in the graph; changes are local until pushed to a remote repository.

Commit messages describe what was changed and why; best practices emphasize concise, imperative tone, and reference related issues or tickets. Some workflows support additional features, such as signing commits to verify authorship, or amending or squashing commits to adjust history. Across systems, commit-like units may be called changesets, revisions, or commits; while the terminology and plumbing differ, the high-level idea is the same: a recorded, immutable record of changes that can be navigated, merged, reverted, and shared.