git diff --name-only 显示未更改的文件

Question

Edit: It doesn't, I explained below what made me think so.

I am working on a feature branch and the output of the command git diff develop --name-only shows a large list of files:

...

path/to/some/unchangedFile.cpp

...

and the command git diff develop -- path/to/some/unchangedFile.cpp shows no output and the files are identical in both commits.

What could cause such issue?

Answer 1

So the problem for me was that:

a. The printed paths were relative to the repository's root and are not absolute or relative to the working directory. I personally think it is a bad implementation because most of the time when I use --name-only I will want to perform a task on the files that were changed and I shouldn't need to "trim" the path myself

b.git-diff doesn't print anything when the file argument doesn't exist on both commits. That is counter intuitive in my opinion. When no output is shown I assume the file exists and is identical in both commits. I think a warning message is appropriate in this case.

Answer 2

You can list the (tracked) files changed in your feature branch since it was created like so :

$ git --no-pager diff --name-only FETCH_HEAD $(git merge-base FETCH_HEAD develop)

$(git merge-base FETCH_HEAD develop) returns the last commit on develop before creating the current branch. Then diff compare the current head to this commit.

You can also see files changed since the last commit

$ git --no-pager diff --name-only FETCH_HEAD~1