Git list only untracked files also custom commands

Question

Is there a way to use a command like git ls-files to show only untracked files   The reason I m asking is because I use the following command to process all deleted files   git ls-files -d   xargs git rm   I d like something similar for untracked files   git some-command --some-options   xargs git add   I was able to find the -o option to git ls-files  but this isn t what I want because it also shows ignored files   I was also able to come up with the following long and ugly command   git status --porcelain   grep         cut -c4-   xargs git add   It seems like there s got to be a better command I can use here   And if there isn t  how do I create custom git commands

User · Answer

When looking for files to potentially add. The output from git show does that but it also includes a lot of other stuff. The following command is useful to get the same list of files but without all of the other stuff.

 git status --porcelain | grep "^?? " | sed -e 's/^[?]* //'

This is useful when combined in a pipeline to find files matching a specific pattern and then piping that to git add.

git status --porcelain | grep "^?? "  | sed -e 's/^[?]* //' | \
egrep "\.project$|\.settings$\.classfile$" | xargs -n1 git add

User · Answer

I think this will do the same thing as the original poster intended  git add   Adding some caveats   You have run git status and confirmed your local directories are clean You have run git diff on each file reported in git status  and confirmed your changes are clean Your changes are covered with automated unit testing Your changes are covered with automated integration testing You have run the integration tests through a debugger  verifying the new behavior by white box observing the new code in action You have run all linting   code convention rules and they pass You have run all unit tests and they pass You have run all local integration tests  and they pass You have deployed your changes to an app review environment and manually tested them end to end in isolation from other changes You have merged latest from main branch and re-run all automated unit and integration testing  fixing any merge conflicts and test failures  Now  my friend  you are ready to git add   with impunity

User · Answer

git add -A -n will do what you want  -A adds all untracked files to the repo  -n makes it a dry-run where the add isn t performed but the status output is given listing each file that would have been added

User · Answer

I know its an old question  but in terms of listing untracked files I thought I would add another one which also lists untracked folders   You can used the git clean operation with -n  dry run  to show you which files  it will remove  including the  gitignore files  by   git clean -xdn  This has the advantage of showing all files and all folders that are not tracked  Parameters    x - Shows all untracked files  including ignored by git and others  like build output etc     d - show untracked directories n - and most importantly  - dryrun  i e  don t actually delete anything  just use the clean mechanism to display the results    It can be a little bit unsafe to do it like this incase you forget the -n  So I usually alias it in git config

User · Answer

All previous answers which I checked would list the files to be committed  too  Here is a simple and easy solution that only lists files which are not yet in the repo and not subject to  gitignore   git status --porcelain   awk            print  2       or  git status --porcelain   grep -v

User · Answer

The accepted answer crashes on filenames with space  I m at this point not sure how to update the alias command  so I ll put the improved version here   git ls-files -z -o --exclude-standard   xargs -0 git add

User · Answer

Everything is very simple  To get list of all untracked files use command git status with option -u  --untracked-files   git status -u

User · Answer

If you just want to remove untracked files  do this   git clean -df   add x to that if you want to also include specifically ignored files   I use git clean -dfx a lot throughout the day   You can create custom git by just writing a script called git-whatever and having it in your path

User · Answer

To list untracked files try   git ls-files --others --exclude-standard   If you need to pipe the output to xargs  it is wise to mind white spaces using git ls-files -z and xargs -0   git ls-files -z -o --exclude-standard   xargs -0 git add   Nice alias for adding untracked files   au    git add   git ls-files -o --exclude-standard    Edit  For reference  git-ls-files

[git] Git: list only "untracked" files (also, custom commands)

Examples related to git

Examples related to git-status

Examples related to git-rm

Examples related to git-stage

Examples related to git-ls-files