Git Commit vs Git Push

In this tutorial, we will learn the difference between git commit and git push.

Git is a distributed version control system that tracks the changes of the files, usually in a collaborative development environment.

Git gives each developer (i.e.) each machine a local copy of the full history of the project directory that is tracked as a repository. Any local changes are then copied from the local repository to the remote repository.

Also, any changes on the remote repository are fetched into the local repository.

Git provides commands git commit and git push to achieve these goals.

We will now elaborate on the difference between them with an example.

Difference Between git commit and git push in Git

The basic difference between git commit and git push is that the scope of the git commit is the local repository, and that of git push is the remote repository.

The git push command always comes after executing the git commit command.

When we execute a git commit command, a snapshot of the project’s currently staged changes is captured. The git add command does the staging of the changes.

The git push command pushes the local repository content to a remote repository. This command transfers the commits from the local repository to the remote repository.

Let’s say we have a file named sample.txt in our local repository, which we have updated, and also have staged the changes of the file with the git add command.

Now, we will check the status of the local repository as follows.

$ git status
On branch main
Changes to be committed:
  (use "git restore --staged <file>..." to unstage)
	modified:   sample.txt

We can see that the changes of the file sample.txt are shown as ready to be committed.

We will now use the git commit command to do this. The syntax of the git commit command to commit changes with a message is, git commit -m <message>.

Thus, we will do as follows.

$ git commit -m "updated sample.txt"

We will now check the Git log of the local repository as follows.

$ git log --oneline
4488776 (HEAD -> main) updated sample.txt
...

We now can see in the Git log, the commit for the file sample.txt is shown. This commit is at the HEAD of the local repository index. The new commit is the direct child of the HEAD of the index, and the branch viz. main is updated to point to it.

We will now execute the git push command to push the commit to the remote repository. The syntax of the git push command is git push <remote-repository> <branch>.

Thus, we will do as follows.

$ git push origin main

We have now pushed the commit to the remote repository, given by the alias origin, and the remote branch main.

We will now recheck the Git log as follows.

$ git log --oneline
4488776 (HEAD -> main, origin/main) updated sample.txt
...

In the Git log, we can now see that the commit for the file sample.txt is shown.

The commit is now both at the HEAD of the index of the local repository and in the remote branch of the remote repository.

Thus, we have elaborated the difference between the commands git commit and git push in Git.