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I presume this is a configuration error somewhere, but I can't figure out where. Regular git commands appear to work fine, but "git diff" does nothing. To be safe, I removed external diff tools from my .gitconfig file. This was installed via MacPorts and is the lates version (1.7.2.2).

What I see is that when I run "git diff" from my workspace, it simply exits, doing nothing.

$ git --version git version 1.7.2.2 $ git diff $

If I back up one directory, out of my root workspace, typing "git diff" gives me this:

$ git diff usage: git diff [--no-index] <path> <path>

This may be expected behavior since I'm not under a git repository.

Any ideas on what I can do to troubleshoot this?

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  • What makes you think there's anything to troubleshoot? What did you expect to see? Commented Aug 27, 2010 at 1:03
  • Note: the error message when using git diff outside a repo will soon be clearer. See my answer below Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 13:08
  • 1
    Note that if you are trying to diff a specific file between two commits and see no output, make sure the casing is correct in the path to the file. Commented Sep 26, 2014 at 19:15

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
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The default output for git diff is the list of changes which have not been committed / added to the index. If there are no changes, then there is no output.

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.

See the documentation for more details. In particular, scroll down to the examples, and read this section:

$ git diff # (1) $ git diff --cached # (2) $ git diff HEAD # (3)
  1. Diff the working copy with the index
  2. Diff the index with HEAD
  3. Diff the working copy with HEAD

Outside your workspace, as you guessed, git won't know what to diff, so you have to explicitly specify two paths to compare, hence the usage message.

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3 Comments

I'm not sure your answer is correct, but it did help me find the answer, so thank you and I'll mark it as such! The default output for git diff is not the list of uncommitted changes, it is the list of uncommitted changes that are also "not yet staged for the next commit". So, the command that does what I was expecting "git diff" to do is actually "git diff HEAD".
To complete the picture, use git diff --cached to show just what's in the index.
does git diff do: (index) - (working directory) or the other way around: (working directory) - (index)?
4

Note: starting git 1.8.5 or 1.9, Q4 2013:

When the user types "git diff" outside a working tree, thinking he is inside one, the current error message that is a single-liner:

usage: git diff --no-index <path> <path>

may not be sufficient to make him realize the mistake.

Add "Not a git repository" to the error message when we fell into the "--no-index" mode without an explicit command line option to instruct us to do so.

See:

Clarify documentation for "diff --no-index".
State that when not inside a repository, --no-index is implied and two arguments are mandatory.

Clarify error message from diff-no-index to inform user that CWD is not inside a repository and thus two arguments are mandatory.

To compare two paths outside a working tree: usage: git diff --no-index <path> <path>
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3

It does nothing if your working directory is clean and there are no differences from the last update. Try editing a file and then run git diff again, and it should then show the diff.

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1

If you are using it outside of a real repository or work-copy, its behaviour is identical to the GNU diff. So you need to inform the 2 directories or files to be compared. Example:

git diff old_dir new_dir.

If there is any difference between them, the output will show you, as expected.

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0

Not in your case, but maybe because the file that you pass not exists

$ git difftool HEAD HEAD^ -- path/that-not-exists

nothing happen

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0

This may not apply to all situations, but when I was having this issue it was because I had not added the new files to git and committed. I had mistakenly assumed the differences in the branches would automatically appear in git diff.

I would suggest to anyone stumbling upon this post to make sure they add and commit. Again, this does not apply to every situation, but it did mine and so it may others as well.

Happy coding

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