Can I make "git status" show the file size of untracked files?

Question

It would be very handy for me to see the file size of untracked files. And maybe the old/new size of changed files.

Is it possible to configure git in a way to show it?

Answer 1

git status --porcelain | awk '{print $2}' | xargs ls -hs | sort -h

1. The git status --porcelain will show the file changed.

$ git status
?? IMG_20160813_205506_AO_HDR.jpg
?? IMG_20160813_205539_AO_HDR.jpg
?? IMG_20160813_211139_HDR.jpg
?? IMG_20160814_143649_HDR.jpg

2. awk '{print $2}' will extract the content after ??
3. Finally, the ls -hs will show the size of each file in a human readable format. and the sort -h will sort them by size.

Sample Output:

$ git status --porcelain | awk '{print $2}' | xargs ls -hs | sort -h
136 IMG_20160813_205506_AO_HDR.jpg
384 IMG_20160813_205539_AO_HDR.jpg
784 IMG_20160813_211139_HDR.jpg
5667898 IMG_20160814_143649_HDR.jpg

Answer 2

No, you cannot make git status do that.

You may not need to make git status do that, because you can write your own command that does that instead. Use:

git -C "$(git rev-parse --show-cdup)" ls-files --other --exclude-standard

to obtain the file list. You can then use whatever command you like to view statistics about those files. You may want to run this command immediately after git status and have git status suppress its own listing with --untracked-files=no. For instance:

alias st='git status -uno;
  git -C "$(git rev-parse --show-cdup)" ls-files --others --exclude-standard -z | 
  xargs -0 ls -lR'

Here I've used -z as well since the command I am using, xargs -0 ls -l, can handle that, and expressed this as a shell alias rather than a Git alias.

There is a flaw here. While git status with -uall will enumerate all the untracked files within a directory, git ls-files --others won't: it behaves like a default git status, summarizing such files by printing only the containing directory name. The ls -l here will show the files within the directory; to stop that, use ls -ld instead, but of course you won't see any file sizes.

(To get modified files, use git ls-files -m rather than --others.)