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

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

?

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.

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 > my_file-patch.patch

git add -A
git diff HEAD

Generate patch if required, and then:

git reset HEAD

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.

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!

Assuming you do not have local commits,

git diff origin/master

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 }

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 .

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