How to show relative paths in git diff command?

Question

It works in this way:

MYPC /d/home/project/some/path (master)
$ git diff --name-only --cached
root.txt
some/path/relative.txt

I.e. it shows path from the GIT root, but I need relative paths from current directory.

Expected result :

$ git diff --name-only --cached --AND_SOME_OPTION
../../root.txt
relative.txt

In common sense, it should work like git status.

P.S. The --relative option doesn't work because it will show files from this directory. In our example it will show only relative.txt.

P.P.S

Using --git-dir doesn't work as well:

$ git --git-dir=$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/.git  diff --cached --name-only
root.txt
some/path/relative.txt

Possible duplicate of How to make git log show file paths relative to current directory? — binduck
– binduck, Commented Jul 14, 2017 at 15:32
@pyx, no, the solution form the question doesn't work for me. — Kirby
– Kirby, Commented Jul 14, 2017 at 16:49

Joao Delgado · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-14 20:59:11Z

10

git status -s already outputs relative paths that can be easily isolated.

If you need to use git diff, you can pipe the output to realpath, if available:

$ git diff --name-only | \
    xargs -I '{}' realpath --relative-to=. $(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/'{}'
../../root.txt
relative.txt

answered Jul 14, 2017 at 20:59

Joao Delgado

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1 Comment

Kirby Over a year ago

Yeah, I definitely need git-diff because there is the option --cached which works for me. Thanks for the post!

philb · Accepted Answer · 2022-03-11 00:03:14Z

Building on Joao Delgado suggestion above to use realpath, you can trick Git into doing what you want using --src-prefix and --dst-prefix:

$ rel=$(realpath --relative-to=. $(git rev-parse --show-toplevel))
$ git diff --src-prefix=a/$rel/ --dst-prefix=b/$rel/
../../root.txt
../../some/path/relative.txt

This will show all modified files (not just those in the current working directory), and it will also use relative paths in the output (for all files though).

Note that at the toplevel this will output paths with a leading ./:

./root.txt
./some/path/relative.txt

Here is how to configure a df alias:

$ git config --global alias.df '!f() { : git diff ; rel=$(realpath --relative-to="$PWD/$GIT_PREFIX" "$PWD"); git diff --src-prefix="a/$rel/" --dst-prefix="b/$rel/" "$@"; }; f'
$ git df
../../root.txt
../../some/path/relative.txt

(this uses the null command : to enable git diff Bash completion for this alias (see https://github.com/git/git/blob/1a4874565fa3b6668042216189551b98b4dc0b1b/contrib/completion/git-completion.bash#L26-L30)

Kirby · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-17 16:21:39Z

0

So far, I didn't find a way to use relative paths by using git-diff.

The only way work for me:

$ git status -s | awk '{print $2}'
../../root.txt
relative.txt

Or

$ git status -s | cut -c4-

The last approach explained in How can I run "git status" and just get the filenames. . The first one quite similar. :)

But it'd be good to find non-pipeline way. Seem, there is no way to avoid using --cached. So, mostly it's not an answer.

edited Jul 17, 2017 at 16:21

answered Jul 14, 2017 at 16:53

Kirby

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