git/list[1] front-page[2] threads[3] people[4] search[5] about
 

Re: Get a git diff without taking index into account

From
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date
Feb 18, 2015, 16:33 UTC
Message-ID
<xmqqfva341sf.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To
<CAAoZyYPVopmP_bv7EZS912R4bxpzNm49_q0XXZXqa52dTDDM2Q@mail.gmail.com>
Eric Frederich <eric.frederich@gmail.com> writes:
> This is from "git help diff".  It seems to imply that I should be able to do it.
> It mentions nothing of the index.

Most of the documentation on early subcommands (and "git diff" certainly is one of the early subcommands) were written back when everybody knew that Git almost always talks about _tracked_ files that are known to the index, and the only time it even cares about untracked ones that are not in the index was when it tries to help users by reminding what the user may have forgot to "git add".

Documentation pages do not bother repeating "this only looks at tracked paths" for this reason; Git is about tracked files by default.

Perhaps you can suggest how to improve the description of commands without being too repetitive?

Thanks.
Previous: Eric FrederichNext: Eric Frederich
Message 5 of 11 in “Get a git diff without taking index into account”
  1. Eric FrederichFeb 18, 2015
  2. Eric FrederichFeb 18, 2015
  3. Junio C HamanoFeb 18, 2015
  4. Eric FrederichFeb 18, 2015
  5. Junio C HamanoFeb 18, 2015
  6. Eric FrederichFeb 18, 2015
  7. Jeff KingFeb 18, 2015
  8. Eric FrederichFeb 18, 2015
  9. Eric FrederichFeb 18, 2015
  10. Junio C HamanoFeb 18, 2015
  11. Jeff KingFeb 18, 2015

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.