All does what you would expect it to do. It adds all new files and modified files, including deletes to the git index. Everything will get staged to git. The dot in git add . just means the current folder and subfolder. So if you don't issue the git add . command from the root folder, only modified files in that folder and subfolders will be staged to the git index. So there you go, that's the difference between git add all and git add . Now don't even get me started with git add -u!