git status (on branch master nothing to commit, working tree clean), however with changes commited

Question

I found many questions with a similar subject, but I didn't found any practical guidance about this issue: why git status informs me nothing to commit, working directory clean, even though I have made a modification at my local branch?

Here are the steps which I followed:

git init 

git remote add https://github.com/username/project.git

git pull origin master

touch test

git add test

git commit -m "Adding file for test purposes only."

git status [On branch master - nothing to commit, working directory clean]

If I do a git push, the modification is committed to the remote branch. I just want to perform "git status" after my modifications, and receive the information that I have changes on my local branch that must be pushed to the remote branch of the project.

Can someone tell me what's going? Straight to the point, please.

Answer 1

Your local branch doesn't know about the remote branch. so that you need to tell git that your local branch is supposed to compare itself to the remote (origin/master in this case); To see the difference you should use:

git branch --set-upstream-to origin/master

or with the short option:

git branch -u origin/master

This options --set-upstream-to (or -u in short) was introduced in git 1.8.0.

Once you have set this option; git status will show you something like:

# Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 1 commit.

To learn more about Git and Git commands, you can visit Git Tutorial.

You can watch this Git Tutorial video for more information: