How to check if there's nothing to be committed in the current branch?

The goal is to get an unambiguous status that can be evaluated in a shell command.

I tried git status but it always returns 0, even if there are items to commit.

git status
echo $?  #this is always 0

I have an idea but I think it is rather a bad idea.

if [ git status | grep -i -c "[a-z]"> 2 ];
then
 code for change...
else
  code for nothing change...
fi

any other way?

---

update with following solve, see Mark Longair's post

I tried this but it causes a problem.

if [ -z $(git status --porcelain) ];
then
	echo "IT IS CLEAN"
else
	echo "PLEASE COMMIT YOUR CHANGE FIRST!!!"
	echo git status
fi

I get the following error [: ??: binary operator expected

now, I am looking at the man and try the git diff.

===================code for my hope, and hope better answer======================

#if [ `git status | grep -i -c "$"` -lt 3 ];
# change to below code,although the above code is simple, but I think it is not strict logical
if [ `git diff --cached --exit-code HEAD^ > /dev/null && (git ls-files --other --exclude-standard --directory | grep -c -v '/$')` ];
then
        echo "PLEASE COMMIT YOUR CHANGE FIRST!!!"
	exit 1

else
    exit 0
fi

An alternative to testing whether the output of git status --porcelain is empty is to test each condition you care about separately. One might not always care, for example, if there are untracked files in the output of git status.

For example, to see if there are any local unstaged changes, you can look at the return code of:

git diff --exit-code

To check if there are any changes that are staged but not committed, you can use the return code of:

git diff --cached --exit-code

Finally, if you want to know about whether there are any untracked files in your working tree that aren't ignored, you can test whether the output of the following command is empty:

git ls-files --other --exclude-standard --directory

Update: You ask below whether you can change that command to exclude the directories in the output. You can exclude empty directories by adding --no-empty-directory, but to exclude all directories in that output I think you'll have to filter the output, such as with:

git ls-files --other --exclude-standard --directory | egrep -v '/$'

The -v to egrep means to only output lines that don't match the pattern, and the pattern matches any line that ends with a /.

The return value of git status just tells you the exit code of git status, not if there are any modifications to be committed.

If you want a more computer-readable version of the git status output, try

git status --porcelain

See the description of git status for more information about that.

Sample use (script simply tests if git status --porcelain gives any output, no parsing needed):

if [ -n "$(git status --porcelain)" ]; then
  echo "there are changes";
else
  echo "no changes";
fi

Please note that you have to quote the string to test, i.e. the output of git status --porcelain. For more hints about test constructs, refer to the Advanced Bash Scripting Guide (Section string comparison).

If you are like me, you want to know if there are:

1. changes to existing files
2. newly added files
3. deleted files

and specifically do not want to know about 4) untracked files.

This should do it:

git status --untracked-files=no --porcelain

Here's my bash code to exit the script if the repo is clean. It uses the short version of the untracked files option:

[[ -z $(git status -uno --porcelain) ]] && echo "this branch is clean, no need to push..." && kill -SIGINT $$;

i'd do a test on this:

git diff --quiet --cached

or this to be explicit:

git diff --quiet --exit-code --cached

where:

--exit-code

Make the program exit with codes similar to diff(1). That is, it exits with 1 if there were differences and 0 means no differences.

--quiet

Disable all output of the program. Implies --exit-code

It's possible to combine git status --porcelain with a simple grep to perform the test.

if git status --porcelain | grep .; then
    echo Repo is dirty
else
    echo Repo is clean
fi

I use this as a simple one-liner sometimes:

# pull from origin if our repo is clean
git status --porcelain | grep . || git pull origin master

Add -qs to your grep command to make it silent.

From the git source code there is a sh script which includes the following.

require_clean_work_tree () {
    git rev-parse --verify HEAD >/dev/null || exit 1
    git update-index -q --ignore-submodules --refresh
    err=0

    if ! git diff-files --quiet --ignore-submodules
    then
        echo >&2 "Cannot $1: You have unstaged changes."
        err=1
    fi

    if ! git diff-index --cached --quiet --ignore-submodules HEAD --
    then
        if [ $err = 0 ]
        then
            echo >&2 "Cannot $1: Your index contains uncommitted changes."
        else
            echo >&2 "Additionally, your index contains uncommitted changes."
        fi
        err=1
    fi

    if [ $err = 1 ]
    then
        test -n "$2" && echo >&2 "$2"
        exit 1
    fi
}

This sniplet shows how its possible to use git diff-files and git diff-index to find out if there are any changes to previously known files. It does not however allow you to find out if a new unknown file has been added to the working tree.

I'm a bit late in the discussion, but if it's only that you need to have an exit code of 0 if git status --porcelain returns nothing and != 0 else, try this:

exit $( git status --porcelain | wc -l )

This will make the number of lines be the exit code, at the risk of getting issues when there's more than 255 lines. So

exit $( git status --porcelain | head -255 | wc -l )

will account for that ;)

I'm using this in a script to have:

• 0 when everything is clean

• 1 when there is a diff or untracked files

  [ -z "$(git status --porcelain)" ]

I've found all answers not useful when there are git-submodules involved.

Small investigation and I've found best possible solution, simple and reliable:

git commit --dry-run && echo "Things to commit" || echo "Clean repo"

You can add -a if any change should be taken into account not only index (detects that submodule should be updated too).

Not pretty, but works:

git status | grep -qF 'working directory clean' || echo "DIRTY"

Not sure whether the message is locale dependent, so maybe put a LANG=C in front.

In addition to other solutions, you could also have separate commands (using git log ranges) that - after a fetch - tells that you need to pull, and/or you need to push.

If you need to script those:

[ "$(git log ..origin/main)" == "" ] || (
  echo "something new on main"
  .. pull ?
)
[ "$(git rev-list origin/main..)" == "" ] || (
  echo "something new local"
  .. push ?
)

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