git working tree status

git working tree status

[Mike Clarke]

Hi all,

I'd like a way of getting a simple summary of the status of a working
tree,  for consumption by other programs rather than humans.

Specifically, I'd like to know whether the working tree is:

a) fully 'clean' -- i.e., all changes checked in, no stashes;
b) all changes checked in, but there are some stashes; or
c) 'dirty' in some way -- new files, uncommitted changes, etc.

The logical way to do this seems to be via an exit code, but the exit
code of git status is not currently rich enough.  As a result, I'm
considering the addition of an option to git status -- perhaps
'--is-clean' -- that would provide the required information.

My questions are:

1) Is there already some way of doing this that I've overlooked?
2) Would the preferred approach be an option (git status --is-clean)
or a sub-command (git is-clean)?  A sub-command would probably result
in cleaner internal code, but would also clutter the interface.
3) Is a patch for such a feature likely to be accepted?

Thanks,

-- 
Mike Clarke

Re: git working tree status

[Miklos Vajna]

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On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 09:54:03PM +0000, Mike Clarke <clarkema@gmail.com> wrote:
> a) fully 'clean' -- i.e., all changes checked in, no stashes;

In case you want to ignore ignores:

$ git ls-files -o

otherwise:

git ls-files -o --exclude-standard

by 'stashes', I guess you mean those extra files, but using that term is
confusing, given that stashes can be listed with git stash list and they
are actually merge commits (so something totally different).


> b) all changes checked in, but there are some stashes; or

git update-index -q --refresh
test -z "$(git diff-index --name-only HEAD --)" && echo "everything committed"

> c) 'dirty' in some way -- new files, uncommitted changes, etc.

git update-index -q --refresh
test -z "$(git diff-index --name-only HEAD --)" && echo "dirty"

see GIT-VERSION-GEN in git.git

> 1) Is there already some way of doing this that I've overlooked?
> 2) Would the preferred approach be an option (git status --is-clean)
> or a sub-command (git is-clean)?  A sub-command would probably result
> in cleaner internal code, but would also clutter the interface.

I guess you overlooked the fact that plumbing is supposed to be used
from scripts and porcelain by the users. git status is porcelain, so
in general just don't use it from scripts.

> 3) Is a patch for such a feature likely to be accepted?

I don't think so, see above.

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Re: git working tree status

[Miklos Vajna]

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On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 11:23:35PM +0100, Miklos Vajna <vmiklos@frugalware.org> wrote:
> > c) 'dirty' in some way -- new files, uncommitted changes, etc.
> 
> git update-index -q --refresh
> test -z "$(git diff-index --name-only HEAD --)" && echo "dirty"

I wanted to write '|| echo "dirty"', sorry.

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Re: git working tree status

[Mike Clarke]

On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 11:23 PM, Miklos Vajna <vmiklos@frugalware.org> wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 26, 2008 at 09:54:03PM +0000, Mike Clarke <clarkema@gmail.com> wrote:

>> b) all changes checked in, but there are some stashes; or
>
> git update-index -q --refresh
> test -z "$(git diff-index --name-only HEAD --)" && echo "everything committed"
>
>> c) 'dirty' in some way -- new files, uncommitted changes, etc.
>
> git update-index -q --refresh
> test -z "$(git diff-index --name-only HEAD --)" && echo "dirty"
>
> see GIT-VERSION-GEN in git.git
>
>> 1) Is there already some way of doing this that I've overlooked?
>> 2) Would the preferred approach be an option (git status --is-clean)
>> or a sub-command (git is-clean)?  A sub-command would probably result
>> in cleaner internal code, but would also clutter the interface.
>
> I guess you overlooked the fact that plumbing is supposed to be used
> from scripts and porcelain by the users. git status is porcelain, so
> in general just don't use it from scripts.
>
>> 3) Is a patch for such a feature likely to be accepted?
>
> I don't think so, see above.

Thanks for the pointers!  To add a bit of context to the original post, we deal
with a lot of small project repositories at work, and we swap between them
quite a lot.  As a result, management of the repositories can be somewhat
burdensome; it's easy to leave a tree in the middle of something, and
then forget.

To get around this, I'm writing a Perl script, called git-map, which

a) can be used to apply a given git command (say, 'fetch') to a whole group of
   repositories
b) gives you an overview of the state of all your repos.  For example:


546 clarkema@swiss:~/git> git-map summary
 C /home/clarkema/git/apollo
 C /home/clarkema/git/cerebro
 C /home/clarkema/git/dionysus
 S /home/clarkema/git/dotfiles
 C /home/clarkema/git/packaging/eAccelerator.git
 C /home/clarkema/git/programmes/cleo-vc-doc-version-2_0
 D /home/clarkema/git/programmes/cumbria-libraries/cumbria-libraries-version-1_0.git
 C /home/clarkema/git/services/cleo-service-loadbalancers.git
 C /home/clarkema/git/services/cleo-service-proxypac.git
 C /home/clarkema/git/services/cleo-service-vc.git
 C /home/clarkema/git/services/cleo-service-webgw.git
 C /home/clarkema/git/software/configutils.git
 C /home/clarkema/git/software/listbuilder.git
 C /home/clarkema/git/software/luns-sdp
 C /home/clarkema/git/software/proxy-pac.git
 C /home/clarkema/git/software/sgdsync.git
 D /home/clarkema/git/software/vc-billing
 C /home/clarkema/git/toybox/git-contrib-import

This shows me that most of me repos are clean. 'dotfiles' has a stash
on it, and two
others have uncommitted changes.  The code I'm currently using, based
on the comments
above, is:

sub cmd_summary
{
   foreach my $tree ( sort @trees ) {
       local $CWD = $tree;

       system( "$GIT update-index -q --refresh" );

       # The redirection is somewhat dirty; but is designed to eat the error
       # message that occurs if there is no HEAD yet.
       system( "$GIT diff-index --quiet HEAD 2> /dev/null" );

       if ( $CHILD_ERROR == -1 ) {
           print STDERR "Failed to execute $GIT: $OS_ERROR\n";
       }
       elsif ( $CHILD_ERROR & 127 ) {
           printf STDERR "Child died with signal %d\n", ( $CHILD_ERROR & 127 );
       }
       else {
           my $exit_code = $CHILD_ERROR >> 8;

           print " ";
           if ( $exit_code == 0 ) {
               if ( have_stash() ) {
                   print colored ['yellow'], "S";
               }
               else {
                   print colored ['green'], "C";
               }
           }
           elsif ( $exit_code == 1 ) {
               print colored ['red'], "D";
           }
           else {
               print colored ['red'], "?";
           }
           print " $tree\n";
       }
   }
}

sub have_stash
{
   my $ref_stash = 'refs/stash';
   system( "$GIT rev-parse --verify $ref_stash > /dev/null 2>&1" );

   if ( $CHILD_ERROR == -1 ) {
       print STDERR "Failed to execute $GIT: $OS_ERROR\n";
   }
   elsif ( $CHILD_ERROR & 127 ) {
       printf STDERR "Child died with signal %d\n", ( $CHILD_ERROR & 127 );
   }

   return ( $CHILD_ERROR >> 8 ) == 0;
}

Any comments or suggestions to improve the above would be gratefully received!

Thanks,

--
Mike Clarke