Detect Changed Files with git

By  on  

There are numerous reasons to want to know which files have been added or modified in a git repository, one of which is your text editor highlighting those files. Another use case is running tasks against only files which are presently changed, like lint or other validation routines.

So how can we identify files which are added or changed? Like this:

git ls-files --others --exclude-standard ; git diff-index --name-only --diff-filter=d HEAD ;

And if you only want to run a routine on a certain portion of files, you can use a regular expression to do so:

{ git ls-files --others --exclude-standard ; git diff-index --name-only --diff-filter=d HEAD ; } | grep --regexp='[.]js$'

The MetaMask team uses the following to run linting on only changed files:

{ git ls-files --others --exclude-standard ; git diff-index --name-only --diff-filter=d HEAD ; } | grep --regexp='[.]js$' | tr '\\n' '\\0' | xargs -0 eslint --fix

Tricks like this are so useful and reliable; you put them in place once and don't consciously think about them again -- and that's OK. Set it and forget it!

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS 3D Folding Animation

    Google Plus provides loads of inspiration for front-end developers, especially when it comes to the CSS and JavaScript wonders they create. Last year I duplicated their incredible PhotoStack effect with both MooTools and pure CSS; this time I'm going to duplicate...

  • By
    Conquering Impostor Syndrome

    Two years ago I documented my struggles with Imposter Syndrome and the response was immense.  I received messages of support and commiseration from new web developers, veteran engineers, and even persons of all experience levels in other professions.  I've even caught myself reading the post...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    CSS Columns

    One major gripe that we've always had about CSS is that creating layouts seems to be more difficult than it should be. We have, of course, adapted and mastered the techniques for creating layouts, but there's no shaking the feeling that there should be a...

  • By
    Create Your Own Dijit CSS Theme with LESS CSS

    The Dojo Toolkit seems to just get better and better.  One of the new additions in Dojo 1.6 was the use of LESS CSS to create Dijit themes.  The move to using LESS is a brilliant one because it makes creating your own Dijit theme...

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!