Can I use git diff on untracked files?

Question

Is it possible to ask git diff to include untracked files in its diff output, or is my best bet to use git add on the newly created files and the e

Answer 1

git add -A
git diff HEAD

Generate patch if required, and then:

git reset HEAD

Answer 2

usually when i work with remote location teams it is important for me that i have prior knowledge what change done by other teams in same file, before i follow git stages untrack-->staged-->commit for that i wrote an bash script which help me to avoid unnecessary resolve merge conflict with remote team or make new local branch and compare and merge on main branch

#set -x 
branchname=`git branch | grep -F '*' |  awk '{print $2}'`
echo $branchname
git fetch origin ${branchname}
for file in `git status | grep "modified" | awk "{print $2}" `
do
echo "PLEASE CHECK OUT GIT DIFF FOR "$file 
git difftool FETCH_HEAD $file ;
done

in above script i fetch remote main branch (not necessary its master branch)to FETCH_HEAD them make a list of my modified file only and compare modified files to git difftool

here many difftool supported by git, i configure 'Meld Diff Viewer' for good GUI comparison .

Answer 3

this works for me:

git add my_file.txt
git diff --cached my_file.txt
git reset my_file.txt

Last step is optional, it will leave the file in the previous state (untracked)

useful if you are creating a patch too:

  git diff --cached my_file.txt > my_file-patch.patch

Answer 4

Changes work when staged and non-staged with this command. New files work when staged:

$ git diff HEAD

If they are not staged, you will only see file differences.