Re: git-ls-files --added?

On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 10:56:52AM +1000, Jon Seymour wrote:

I know that for the purposes of writing scripts it would be really great if we had a plumbing command that gave us exactly what git-status tells us, but in a machine-parseable and stable output format.

Particularly tricky to get both correct and fast is partially-staged files, but git-status gets it right. By partially staged I mean it has new uncommitted content in the index as well as even newer content in the worktree.

Files fall roughly into these categories:

1. Staged:
	1.1 Existing file
	1.2 New file
	1.3 Deleted file
	1.4 File was renamed, this is the old path
	1.5 File was renamed, this is the new path

2. Unmerged

3. Modified
	3.1 File was modified
	3.2 File was deleted

4. Untracked
	4.1 This is a file
	4.2 This is a directory

Here's some semantics I would expect from such a command:

- A file can be both staged and modified.

- A file that is unmerged is only unmerged.
  It is neither modified nor staged.

- Untracked path behavior is nicer with git-status then with
  git-ls-files, the reason being that status special-cases
  directories.

Getting all of this information quickly (without having to run multiple commands) would be ideal. This command is a combination of diff-against-worktree, diff-against-index, show-untracked-files, etc. so it's not a paradigm that's easily constructed with the existing plumbing.