Git status - is there a way to show changes only in a specific directory?

Question

From within the directory:

git status .

---

You can use any path really, use this syntax:

git status <directoryPath>

For instance for directory with path "my/cool/path/here"

git status my/cool/path/here

The reason that git status takes the same options as git commit is that the purpose of git status is to show what would happen if you committed with the same options as you passed to git status. In this respect git status is really git commit --preview.

To get what you want, you could do this which shows staged changes:

git diff --stat --cached -- <directory_of_interest>

and this, which shows unstaged changes:

git diff --stat -- <directory_of_interest>

or this which shows both:

git diff --stat HEAD -- <directory_of_interest>

Simplest solution:

1. Go to the directory
2. git status | grep -v '\.\.\/'

Of course this discards colors.

As a note, if you simplify to check git stats without going to git directory;

### create file
sudo nano /usr/local/bin/gitstat

### put this in

#!/usr/bin/env bash

dir=$1

if [[ $dir == "" ]]; then
    echo "Directory is required!"
    exit
fi

echo "Git stat for '$dir'."

git --git-dir=$dir/.git --work-tree=$dir diff --stat

### give exec perm
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/gitstat

And calling that simple script: gitstat /path/to/foo-project. You can also use it while in foo-project just doing gitstat . and so suppose shorter than git status -s, git diff --stat or git diff --stat HEAD if your are always using console instead of gui's.

Credits:

• @Charles Bailey: https://stackoverflow.com/a/715373/362780
• Git Status From Outside of the Working Directory