Run a command if there are unstaged changes

A quick one-liner to run a command only if there are unstaged changes: the --quiet flag of git diff

The flag does two things:

• Disables all output of the command
• Exits with 1 if there are differences, and 0 if there are no differences.

That means you can combine it with boolean operators to only run another command if files have (or have not) changed:

# Run `command` if there are unstaged changes
git diff --quiet || command

# Run `command` if there are NO unstaged changes
git diff --quiet && command

Other tips

• Check for untracked files

  git ls-files --others --exclude-standard | grep -q . && command
  

• Include staged changes

  git diff --cached --quiet || command
  

• Combine with entr for file watching

  git diff --quiet || entr -r command
  

• Use in CI pipelines

  git diff --quiet || echo "Changes detected, running tests..." && npm test
  

Jan 17, 2025