What is the difference between a tree and a directory?

Question

I am starting to start git, trying to understand the concepts and terms. The git glossary says that a tree is equivalent to a directory, and a directory is what you get with ls. Are they interchangeable terms? Or should the "tree" and the "directory" be used in different contexts or refer to separate (albeit related) things?

Answer 1

Short answer: yes, a tree is a directory, and a directory is a tree.

Long answer: A tree is an object containing a list of blobs, names for attaching to blocks, and other trees and names for attaching them. http://book.git-scm.com/1_the_git_object_model.html has a pretty good explanation of the different types of objects in the git model; I would suggest reading it!

Answer 2

In Git terminology, a “tree” is a hierarchical structure of files and directories. This (purposefully) is very similar to a directory in a file system.

A Git commit object contains a reference to a tree object, which is the state of all files at the time of commit.

Answer 3

• Git Object Model
• All Git Object Types: Blob, Tree, Commit And Tag

Answer 4

Simply put, a “tree” refers to a snapshot of the entire state of the repository at that point in time (for example, what you have for your current code [which is also known as HEAD], the repository, when the commit is currently made, etc. .)

The directory only refers to a file system directory.