"commit" usually (always?) means to take the changes you made and enter them into the version control system. Git is a distributed system, where every user get

"commit" usually (always?) means to take the changes you made and enter them into the version control system. Git is a distributed system, where every user gets their own repository, so "commit" alters the repository on the local machine. This means you can use version control with impunity and not worry about giving bad code to colleagues. You can commit a broken work-in-progress without harming anything. You can also create branches with impunity and not have to worry about naming conflicts, polluting the space of branch names, etc. If something turns out to be a bad idea, you just zap it and nobody ever has to know. When you reach a version that needs to go out to the wider world, you use "git push" to send it to a shared server. By default git remembers where you used "git pull" to obtain the source from in the first place, and can automatically push back to that server. (Note that I say shared server, not central server. If you want a single official server, you a free to dictate that for your project. You can also give each work group their own repository.)