From: Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2011 12:23:13 GMT
Subject: Re: Best way to check for a "dirty" working tree?
Message-ID: <BANLkTi=-HA1_47DvtGbVHx8twuEAxT8STQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <4DF381BF.3050301@dirk.my1.cc>

Hi Dirk,

Dirk Süsserott writes:
> A) if ! git diff-index --quiet HEAD -- foo.bar; then
>       dirty=1
>   fi
>
> and
>
> B) if ! git diff --quiet -- foo.bar; then
>       dirty=1
>   fi
>
> Both A) and B) work. But which one is better/faster/more reliable? Or is
> there a better solution? For my purpose, I cannot see a difference
> between diff and diff-index, except the syntax.

diff is a more porcelain'ish command, while diff-index is closer to
the plumbing.  Therefore, diff contains some extra argument parsing/
pretty printing code that your script doesn't utilize -- use
diff-index.  Also, look at the various scripts in git.git to see what
they use; for example, require_clean_work_tree in git-sh-setup.sh.

-- Ram