A.9 commit—Check files into the repository

• Synopsis: commit [-lRf] [-m 'log_message' | -F file] [-r revision] [files…]
• Requires: working directory, repository.
• Changes: repository.
• Synonym: ci

Use commit when you want to incorporate changes from your working source files into the source repository.

If you don't specify particular files to commit, all of the files in your working current directory are examined. commit is careful to change in the repository only those files that you have really changed. By default (or if you explicitly specify the ‘-R’ option), files in subdirectories are also examined and committed if they have changed; you can use the ‘-l’ option to limit commit to the current directory only.

commit verifies that the selected files are up to date with the current revisions in the source repository; it will notify you, and exit without committing, if any of the specified files must be made current first with update (see section update—Bring work tree in sync with repository). commit does not call the update command for you, but rather leaves that for you to do when the time is right.

When all is well, an editor is invoked to allow you to enter a log message that will be written to one or more logging programs (see section The modules file, and see section Loginfo) and placed in the RCS file inside the repository. This log message can be retrieved with the log command; see log—Print out log information for files. You can specify the log message on the command line with the ‘-m message’ option, and thus avoid the editor invocation, or use the ‘-F file’ option to specify that the argument file contains the log message.