How to fix no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a") in Git

Before staging, see what Git knows about your changes:

git status

This shows three categories:
- Changes to be committed (staged, ready for commit)
- Changes not staged for commit (modified tracked files)
- Untracked files (new files Git doesn't know about)

If the first section is empty, that's why you see "no changes added to commit."

Add individual files or directories to the staging area:

# Stage a specific file
git add path/to/file.js

# Stage multiple files
git add file1.js file2.js file3.js

# Stage all files in a directory
git add src/

# Stage all changes (modified and new files)
git add .

# Stage all changes in the entire repository
git add -A

After staging, run git status again to confirm files appear under "Changes to be committed."

If you want to commit only some changes from a file, use interactive mode:

git add -p

Git will show each change ("hunk") and ask whether to stage it:
- y = stage this hunk
- n = don't stage this hunk
- s = split the hunk into smaller pieces
- q = quit, don't stage remaining hunks

This is useful when you've made multiple unrelated changes in one file and want separate commits.

If you want to stage and commit all modified tracked files in one step:

git commit -a -m "Your commit message"

The -a flag automatically stages all modified and deleted tracked files before committing.

Important limitation: -a does NOT stage new (untracked) files. You must explicitly git add new files first.

# This works for modified files
git commit -am "Fix typo in documentation"

# But for new files, you need:
git add newfile.js
git commit -m "Add new feature"

Once you've staged your changes, create the commit:

git commit -m "Your descriptive commit message"

Or for a more detailed message, omit -m to open your configured editor:

git commit

Verify the commit was created:

git log -1