Can I use git diff on untracked files

Question

Is it possible to ask git diff to include untracked files in its diff output  or is my best bet to use git add on the newly created files and the existing files I have edited  then use  git diff --cached

User · Answer

usually when i work with remote location teams it is important for me that i have prior knowledge what change done by other teams in same file, before i follow git stages untrack-->staged-->commit for that i wrote an bash script which help me to avoid unnecessary resolve merge conflict with remote team or make new local branch and compare and merge on main branch

#set -x 
branchname=`git branch | grep -F '*' |  awk '{print $2}'`
echo $branchname
git fetch origin ${branchname}
for file in `git status | grep "modified" | awk "{print $2}" `
do
echo "PLEASE CHECK OUT GIT DIFF FOR "$file 
git difftool FETCH_HEAD $file ;
done

in above script i fetch remote main branch (not necessary its master branch)to FETCH_HEAD them make a list of my modified file only and compare modified files to git difftool

here many difftool supported by git, i configure 'Meld Diff Viewer' for good GUI comparison .

User · Answer

Changes work when staged and non-staged with this command  New files work when staged      git diff HEAD   If they are not staged  you will only see file differences

User · Answer

For one file   git diff --no-index  dev null new file   For all new files   for next in    git ls-files --others --exclude-standard     do git --no-pager diff --no-index  dev null  next  done    As alias   alias gdnew  for next in     git ls-files --others --exclude-standard     do git --no-pager diff --no-index  dev null   next  done     For all modified and new files combined as one command     git --no-pager diff  gdnew

User · Answer

Not 100  to the point  but if for some reason you don t want to add your files to the index as suggested by the accepted answer  here is another option   If the files are untracked  obviously the diff is the whole file  so you can just view them with less   less   git ls-files --others --exclude-standard    Navigate between them with  n and  p for next and previous    Update from the comments  If you need a patch format you can also combine it with git diff   git ls-files --others --exclude-standard   xargs -n 1 git --no-pager diff  dev null   less   You can also redirect the output to a file or use an other diff command in this case

User · Answer

For my interactive day-to-day gitting  where I diff the working tree against the HEAD all the time  and would like to have untracked files included in the diff   add -N --intent-to-add is unusable  because it breaks git stash   So here s my git diff replacement   It s not a particularly clean solution  but since I really only use it interactively  I m OK with a hack   d         if test        0  then                       git diff --color             git ls-files --others --exclude-standard                   while read -r i  do git diff --color --  dev null   i   done              git config --get core pager      else         git diff          fi     Typing just d will include untracked files in the diff  which is what I care about in my workflow   and d args    will behave like regular git diff   Notes    We re using the fact here that git diff is really just individual diffs concatenated  so it s not possible to tell the d output from a  real diff  -- except for the fact that all untracked files get sorted last  The only problem with this function is that the output is colorized even when redirected  but I can t be bothered to add logic for that  I couldn t find any way to get untracked files included by just assembling a slick argument list for git diff   If someone figures out how to do this  or if maybe a feature gets added to git at some point in the future  please leave a note here

User · Answer

git add -A git diff HEAD   Generate patch if required  and then   git reset HEAD

User · Answer

With recent git versions you can git add -N the file  or --intent-to-add   which adds a zero-length blob to the index at that location  The upshot is that your  untracked  file now becomes a modification to add all the content to this zero-length file  and that shows up in the  git diff  output   git diff  echo  this is a new file   gt  new txt git diff  git add -N new txt git diff diff --git a new txt b new txt index e69de29  3b2aed8 100644 --- a new txt     b new txt    -0 0  1     this is a new file   Sadly  as pointed out  you can t git stash while you have an --intent-to-add file pending like this  Although if you need to stash  you just add the new files and then stash them  Or you can use the emulation workaround   git update-index --add --cacheinfo   100644 e69de29bb2d1d6434b8b29ae775ad8c2e48c5391 new txt    setting up an alias is your friend here

User · Answer

I believe you can diff against files in your index and untracked files by simply supplying the path to both files   git diff --no-index tracked file untracked file

User · Answer

this works for me   git add my file txt git diff --cached my file txt git reset my file txt   Last step is optional  it will leave the file in the previous state  untracked   useful if you are creating a patch too     git diff --cached my file txt  gt  my file-patch patch

User · Answer

Assuming you do not have local commits   git diff origin master

[git] Can I use git diff on untracked files?

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