How do I show the changes which have been staged?

user_91757 0
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I staged a few changes to be committed. How do I see the diffs of all files which are staged for the next commit? Is there a handy one-liner for this?

git status only shows names of files which are staged, but I want to see the actual diffs.

The git-diff(1) man page says:

git diff [--options] [--] […]

This form is to view the changes you made relative to the index (staging area for the next commit). In other words, the differences are what you could tell git to further add to the index but you still haven't. You can stage these changes by using git-add(1).

git-stage git-diff diff dvcs git
16 Answers

If you have more than one file with staged changes, it may more practical to use git add -i, then select 6: diff, and finally pick the file(s) you are interested in.

user_9876230

By default git diff is used to show the changes which is not added to the list of git updated files. But if you want to show the changes which is added or stagged then you need to provide extra options that will let git know that you are interested in stagged or added files diff .

$ git diff          # Default Use
$ git diff --cached # Can be used to show difference after adding the files 
$ git diff --staged # Same as 'git diff --cached' mostly used with latest version of git

Example

$ git diff 
diff --git a/x/y/z.js  b/x/y/z.js index 98fc22b..0359d84 100644
--- a/x/y/z.js 
+++ b/x/y/z.js @@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ var a = function (tooltip) {

-        if (a)
+        if (typeof a !== 'undefined')
             res = 1;
         else
             res = 2;

$ git add x/y/z.js
$ git diff
$

Once you added the files , you can't use default of 'git diff' .You have to do like this:- 

$ git diff --cached
diff --git a/x/y/z.js  b/x/y/z.js index 98fc22b..0359d84 100644
    --- a/x/y/z.js 
    +++ b/x/y/z.js @@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ var a = function (tooltip) {

    -        if (a)
    +        if (typeof a !== 'undefined')
                 res = 1;
             else
                 res = 2;
user_53475550

To see the differences for a specific stage file (or files) you can use

git diff --staged -- <path>...

For example,

git diff --staged -- app/models/user.rb
user_15002500

The --cached didn't work for me, ... where, inspired by git log

git diff origin/<branch>..<branch> did.

user_41516260

Another tool that makes this easy is Magit mode in Emacs. Its default view lists both staged and unstaged changes. It acts like git add -p on steroids, because you can easily stage or unstage hunks (or even single lines of code) with editor commands. It's important to know the standard git porcelain, but I rarely use git diff --cached anymore.

https://magit.vc/

user_1827340
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