In vanilla Emacs (without Magit), the vc (Version Control) library acts as a thin wrapper around Git. Unlike Magit, which has a specialized "staging" workflow, vanilla vc follows the standard Git logic: you must add files to the index (stage them) before you commit them.
Here are the two best ways to do this using only built-in features.
If you have many files to commit, the most efficient way is to use vc-dir (which is just Dired with version control information enabled).
- Open the directory: Open the folder containing your files in Dired (
C-x d). - Identify changes: Look for files marked with
M(Modified) orA(Added/Untracked). - Mark the files: