How to find which files have not changed since commit?

Question

In git, how can one find out which files in directory have NOT changed since some commit?

that works for one file, but how to find out all files that have not changed since a commit — santervo, Jul 21 '14 at 13:12

score 7 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 22 '14 at 06:19

7

IMO a far easier way to generate your list would be the following command chain:

git ls-files --full-name | grep -v "$(git diff --name-only <REF>)"

Where <REF> is the hash of the commit from which you want the unchanged files since.

git ls-files list, as you could expect, all versioned files and then you grep all files which aren't in the list of changed files since the specified commit.

edited Jul 22 '14 at 06:19

santervo

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answered Jul 21 '14 at 16:27

Sascha Wolf

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Note that this requires you to be in the top level of the repository, since `git ls-files` will only list files in and below the working directory. – William Pursell Jul 22 '14 at 00:09
If you want to compare to your working directory, simply remove "". – GPHemsley Jun 02 '22 at 13:54

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 21 '14 at 13:27

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Use git diff --name-only $REV to get the list of files that have changed. Use git -C $(git rev-parse --show-toplevel) ls-tree -r HEAD --name-only to get the list of all files. Use grep to separate the sets:

git diff ${REV?must specify a REV} --name-only > /tmp/list
git -C $(git rev-parse --show-toplevel) ls-tree -r HEAD  --name-only |
     grep -f /tmp/list -v

Prior to executing those commands, you'll need to specify a rev in the variable REV. eg, REV=HEAD~6 or REV=branch-name~~

answered Jul 21 '14 at 13:27

William Pursell

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Ha! you should have just said 'learn to use git' :) I was looking for more simpler approach but I guess this is not so common task. – santervo Jul 21 '14 at 13:30
Is there a reason you don't use `git ls-files`? Then a list could be generated with `git ls-files | grep -v $(git diff --name-only )`. – Sascha Wolf Jul 21 '14 at 16:24
No reason, I'm just more familiar with ls-tree. – William Pursell Jul 21 '14 at 17:22

Ofek Shilon · Answer 3 · 2022-04-18T12:21:53.807

Note the suggested solutions treat file deletion after a commit as a change after it.

Also on a large git repo, the suggested one-liners did not work for me with the thrown error: grep: Argument list too long.

So, I had to work with files:

$ git ls-files --full-name | sort > all.git
$ git diff --name-only <REF> | sort > recent.change
$ comm -12 all.git recent > recent.change.not.deleted
$ comm -13 all.git recent.change.not.deleted

comm is a linux utility that shows common and unique lines in two files. Hopefully similar utilities exist for other platforms.

How to find which files have not changed since commit?

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