Question

How can I check if I have any uncommitted changes in my git repository:

1. Changes added to the index but not committed
2. Untracked files

from a script?

git-status seems to always return zero with git version 1.6.4.2.

Answer 1

Great timing! I wrote a blog post about exactly this a few days ago, when I figured out how to add git status information to my prompt.

Here’s what I do:

1. For dirty status:

   # Returns "*" if the current git branch is dirty.
   function evil_git_dirty {
     [[ $(git diff --shortstat 2> /dev/null | tail -n1) != "" ]] && echo "*"
   }
   

2. For untracked files (Notice the --porcelain flag to git status which gives you nice parse-able output):

   # Returns the number of untracked files
   
   function evil_git_num_untracked_files {
     expr `git status --porcelain 2>/dev/null| grep "^??" | wc -l` 
   }
   

Although git diff --shortstat is more convenient, you can also use git status --porcelain for getting dirty files:

# Get number of files added to the index (but uncommitted)
expr $(git status --porcelain 2>/dev/null| grep "^M" | wc -l)

# Get number of files that are uncommitted and not added
expr $(git status --porcelain 2>/dev/null| grep "^ M" | wc -l)

# Get number of total uncommited files
expr $(git status --porcelain 2>/dev/null| egrep "^(M| M)" | wc -l)

Note: The 2>/dev/null filters out the error messages so you can use these commands on non-git directories. (They’ll simply return 0 for the file counts.)

Edit:

Here are the posts:

Adding Git Status Information to your Terminal Prompt

Improved Git-enabled Shell Prompt