How do I show the changes which have been staged

Question

I staged a few changes to be committed  how can I see the diff of all files which are staged for the next commit  I m aware of git status  but I d like to see the actual diffs - not just the names of files which are staged  I saw that the git-diff 1  man page says  git diff  --options   --        This form is to view the changes you made relative to the index  staging area for the next commit   In other words  the differences are what you could tell git to further add to the index but you still haven t  You can stage these changes by using git-add 1    Unfortunately  I can t quite make sense of this  There must be some handy one-liner which I could create an alias for  right

User · Answer

You can use this command   git diff --cached --name-only   The --cached option of git diff means to get staged files  and the --name-only option means to get only names of the files

User · Answer

USING A VISUAL DIFF TOOL The Default Answer  at the command line  The top answers here correctly show how to view the cached staged changes in the Index    git diff --cached  or   git diff --staged which is an alias    Launching the Visual Diff Tool Instead The default answer will spit out the diff changes at the git bash  i e  on the command line or in the console   For those who prefer a visual representation of the staged file differences  there is a script available within git which launches a visual diff tool for each file viewed rather than showing them on the command line  called difftool    git difftool --staged  This will do the same this as git diff --staged  except any time the diff tool is run  i e  every time a file is processed by diff   it will launch the default visual diff tool  in my environment  this is kdiff3   After the tool launches  the git diff script will pause until your visual diff tool is closed   Therefore  you will need to close each file in order to see the next one    You Can Always Use difftool in place of diff in git commands For all your visual diff needs  git difftool will work in place of any git diff command  including all options  For example  to have the visual diff tool launch without asking whether to do it for each file  add the -y option  I think usually you ll want this       git difftool -y --staged  In this case it will pull up each file in the visual diff tool  one at a time  bringing up the next one after the tool is closed  Or to look at the diff of a particular file that is staged in the Index    git difftool -y --staged  lt  lt relative path filename gt  gt   For all the options  see the man page    git difftool --help    Setting up Visual Git Tool To use a visual git tool other than the default  use the -t  lt tool gt  option    git difftool -t  lt tool gt   lt  lt other args gt  gt   Or  see the difftool man page for how to configure git to use a different default visual diff tool    Example  gitconfig entries for vscode as diff merge tool Part of setting up a difftool involves changing the  gitconfig file  either through git commands that change it behind the scenes  or editing it directly  You can find your  gitconfig in your home directory such as   in Unix or normally c  users  lt username gt  on Windows   Or  you can open the user  gitconfig in your default Git editor with git config -e --global  Here are example entries in my global user  gitconfig for VS Code as both diff tool and merge tool   diff      tool   vscode     guitool   vscode  merge      tool   vscode     guitool   vscode  mergetool      prompt   true  difftool  quot vscode quot       cmd   code --wait --diff   quot  LOCAL  quot    quot  REMOTE  quot      path   c  apps vscode code exe  mergetool  quot vscode quot       cmd   code --wait   quot  MERGED  quot      path   c  apps vscode code exe

User · Answer

git gui and git-cola are graphical utilities that let you view and manipulate the index   Both include simple visual diffs for staged files  and git-cola can also launch a more sophisticated side-by-side visual diff tool   See my closely related answer at How to remove a file from the index in git   and also this official catalog of Git - GUI Clients

User · Answer

If you have more than one file with staged changes  it may more practical to use git add -i  then select 6  diff  and finally pick the file s  you are interested in

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Note that git status -v also shows the staged changes   meaning you need to have staged -- git add -- some changes  No staged changes  no diff with git status -v  It does that since Git 1 2 0  February 2006   In its long form  default   git status has an undocumented  verbose  option which actually display the diff between HEAD and index   And it is about to become even more complete  see  Show both staged  amp  working tree in git diff    git 2 3 4   Q2 2015    git status -v -v

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The --cached didn t work for me      where  inspired by git log git diff origin  lt branch gt    lt branch gt  did

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If you d be interested in a visual side-by-side view  the diffuse visual diff tool can do that  It will even show three panes if some but not all changes are staged  In the case of conflicts  there will even be four panes     Invoke it with  diffuse -m   in your Git working copy   If you ask me  the best visual differ I ve seen for a decade  Also  it is not specific to Git  It interoperates with a plethora of other VCS  including SVN  Mercurial  Bazaar       See also  Show both staged  amp  working tree in git diff

User · Answer

From version 1 7 and later it should be   git diff --staged

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A simple graphic makes this clearer     git diff  Shows the changes between the working directory and the index  This shows what has been changed  but is not staged for a commit   git diff --cached  Shows the changes between the index and the HEAD  which is the last commit on this branch   This shows what has been added to the index and staged for a commit   git diff HEAD  Shows all the changes between the working directory and HEAD  which includes changes in the index   This shows all the changes since the last commit  whether or not they have been staged for commit or not   Also   There is a bit more detail on 365Git

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If your intentions are to push-target a remote repo branch and your first pass at a commit change log were incomplete  you can correct the commit statement before pushing like this  Locally     make some changes     git diff   look at unstaged changes  git commit -am quot partial description of changes quot       recall more changes unmentioned in commit     git diff origin master   look at staged but not pushed changes     amend staged commit statement     git commit --amend -m quot i missed mentioning these changes      quot   git push

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By default git diff is used to show the changes which is not added to the list of git updated files  But if you want to show the changes which is added or stagged then you need to provide extra options that will let git know that you are interested in stagged or added files diff      git diff            Default Use   git diff --cached   Can be used to show difference after adding the files    git diff --staged   Same as  git diff --cached  mostly used with latest version of git    Example    git diff  diff --git a x y z js  b x y z js index 98fc22b  0359d84 100644 --- a x y z js      b x y z js    -43 7  43 7    var a   function  tooltip     -        if  a           if  typeof a      undefined                res   1           else              res   2     git add x y z js   git diff     Once you added the files   you can t use default of  git diff   You have to do like this -     git diff --cached diff --git a x y z js  b x y z js index 98fc22b  0359d84 100644     --- a x y z js          b x y z js    -43 7  43 7    var a   function  tooltip         -        if  a               if  typeof a      undefined                    res   1               else                  res   2

User · Answer

It should just be   git diff --cached   --cached means show the changes in the cache index  i e  staged changes  against the current HEAD  --staged is a synonym for --cached   --staged and --cached does not point to HEAD  just difference with respect to HEAD  If you cherry pick what to commit using git add --patch  or git add -p   --staged will return what is staged

User · Answer

For Staging Area vs Repository last commit  comparison use    git diff --staged   The  command compares your staged   git add fileName  changes to your last commit  If you want to see what you   ve staged that will go into your next commit  you can use git diff --staged  This command compares your staged changes to your last commit   For Working vs Staging comparison use     git diff    The command compares what is in your working directory with what is in your staging area  It   s important to note that git diff by itself doesn   t show all changes made since your last commit     only changes that are still unstaged  If you   ve staged all of your changes   git add fileName   git diff will give you no output   Also  if you stage a file   git add fileName  and then edit it  you can use git diff to see the changes in the file that are staged and the changes that are unstaged

User · Answer

Think about the gitk tool also   provided with git and very useful to see the changes

[git] How do I show the changes which have been staged?

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