TortoiseGit Manual

If there are no conflicts, you are ready to commit your changes. Select any file and/or folders you want to commit, then TortoiseGit → Commit....

Figure 2.9. The Commit dialog

The commit dialog will show you every changed file, including added, deleted and unversioned files. If you don't want a changed file to be committed, just uncheck that file. If you want to include an unversioned file, just check that file to add it to the commit.

Default commit dialog just list select paths and their child directory files. If you want to list all files of project, you can just click Whole Project.

Double clicking on any modified file in the commit dialog will launch the external diff tool to show your changes. The context menu will give you more options, as shown in the screenshot. You can also drag files from here into another application such as a text editor or an IDE.

You can select or deselect items by clicking on the checkbox to the left of the item.

The columns displayed in the bottom pane are customizable. If you right click on any column header you will see a context menu allowing you to select which columns are displayed. You can also change column width by using the drag handle which appears when you move the mouse over a column boundary. These customizations are preserved, so you will see the same headings next time.

Please note that the commit dialog always shows staged files - even if it was started on a different folder (this is by design in order to not forget to commit those, e.g. in case of a merge). Also, in the lower left there is the checkbox Show whole project. Use this to override the file/folder filter and show all changed files for the whole repository. This setting is remembered for a repository - even if you started the commit dialog on a single file.

The commit dialog supports changelist feature to help with grouping related files together. Find out about this feature in the section called “Change Lists”.

Sometimes you have versioned files that change frequently but that you really don't want to commit. Sometimes this indicates a flaw in your build process - why are those files versioned? should you be using template files? But occasionally it is inevitable. A classic reason is that your IDE changes a timestamp in the project file every time you build. The project file has to be versioned as it includes all the build settings, but it doesn't need to be committed just because the timestamp changed.

To help out in awkward cases like this, there is a Git flag for files called skip-worktree - then files are treated as unmodified and Git also refuses to merge those on merge/pull (cf. git-update-index(1) man-page). As another way to tackle cases like this, we have reserved a changelist called ignore-on-commit. Any file added to this changelist will automatically be unchecked in the commit dialog. You can still commit changes, but you have to select it manually in the commit dialog.

Sometimes you want to only commit parts of the changes you made to a file. Such a situation usually happens when you're working on something but then an urgent fix needs to be committed, and that fix happens to be in the same file you're working on.

right click on the file and use Context Menu → Restore after commit. This will create a copy of the file as it is. Then you can edit the file, e.g. in TortoiseGitMerge and undo all the changes you don't want to commit. After saving those changes you can commit the file.

After the commit is done, the copy of the file is restored automatically, and you have the file with all your modifications that were not committed back.

Be sure to enter a log message which describes the changes you are committing. This will help you to see what happened and when, as you browse through the project log messages at a later date. The message can be as long or as brief as you like; many projects have guidelines for what should be included, the language to use, and sometimes even a strict format.

You can apply simple formatting to your log messages using a convention similar to that used within emails. To apply styling to text, use *text* for bold, _text_ for underlining, and ^text^ for italics.

Figure 2.10. The Commit Dialog Spellchecker

TortoiseGit includes a spellchecker to help you get your log messages right (cf. the section called “Spell checker”). This will highlight any misspelled words. Use the context menu to access the suggested corrections. Of course, it doesn't know every technical term that you do, so correctly spelt words will sometimes show up as errors. But don't worry. You can just add them to your personal dictionary using the context menu.

The log message window also includes a filename and function auto-completion facility. This uses regular expressions to extract class and function names from the (text) files you are committing, as well as the filenames themselves. If a word you are typing matches anything in the list (after you have typed at least 3 characters, or pressed Ctrl+Space), a drop-down appears allowing you to select the full name. The regular expressions supplied with TortoiseGit are held in the TortoiseGit installation bin folder. You can also define your own regexes and store them in %APPDATA%\TortoiseGit\autolist.txt. Of course your private autolist will not be overwritten when you update your installation of TortoiseGit. If you are unfamiliar with regular expressions, take a look at the introduction at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression , and the online documentation and tutorial at https://www.regular-expressions.info/ .

Getting the regex just right can be tricky, so to help you sort out a suitable expression there is a test dialog which allows you to enter an expression and then type in filenames to test it against. Start it from the command prompt using the command TortoiseGitProc.exe /command:autotexttest.

You can re-use previously entered log messages. Just use the command Context Menu → Paste Recent messages to view a list of the last few messages you entered for this working tree. The number of stored messages can be customized in the TortoiseGit settings dialog.

The log message window also includes a commit message snippet facility. These snippets are shown in the autocomplete drop-down once you type a snippet shortcut, and selecting the snippet in the autocomplete drop-down then inserts the full text of the snippet. The snippets supplied with TortoiseGit are held in the TortoiseGit installation bin folder. You can also define your own snippets and store them in %APPDATA%\TortoiseGit\snippet.txt. # is the comment character. Use escape sequences \t, \r, \n, and \\.

You can add your name and email address to the end of the log message by clicking Add Signed-off-by.

You can clear all stored commit messages from the Saved data page of TortoiseGit's settings, or you can clear individual messages from within the Recent messages dialog using the Delete key.

If you want to include the checked paths in your log message, you can use the command Context Menu → Paste filename list in the edit control.

Another way to insert the paths into the log message is to simply drag the files from the file list onto the edit control.

After pressing Commit, a dialog appears displaying the progress of the commit.

Figure 2.11. The Progress dialog showing a commit in progress

In the lower left, there is a menu button which provides shortcuts to further steps, such as ReCommit (resets the commit dialog and allows you to continue committing) or Push in order to push your commit to a remote repository.