Question

I am looking for a way to have output in the same manner as ls-tree, but of my working directory. Whenever I run git ls-tree . it says fatal: Not a valid object name .

Answer 1

git ls-tree only works with git refs, e.g. ls-tree HEAD or ls-tree 1.9.1

Try git ls-files. You probably want the -s and/or -m flags.

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As you point out, git ls-files -s will list the files in the index (i.e. files that have been staged).

In theory, you could mess with the index, run git ls-files -s, then try restore it, e.g.

git commit
git add .
git ls-files -s
git reset .
git reset --soft HEAD^

Seems right, and worked in a simple test, but could eat all your files.