How can I get 'git status' to always use short format?

Question

I'd like git status to always use the short format:

$ git status --short
 M file1
 M dir/file2
?? file_untracked3
?? dir/file_untracked4

There doesn't seem to exist a configuration option for this, and git config --global alias.status "status --short" does not work. I haven't managed to create an alias in zsh either.

How can I make git status to use the short format by default?

Answer 1

Starting git1.8.4 (July 2013), you can configure git status to use short by default.
See commit 50e4f757f4adda096239c1ad60499cf606bf2c6f:

Some people always run 'git status -s'.
The configuration variable status.short allows to set it by default.

So:

git config status.short true

And you would be all set!

---

Ben Allred adds in the comments:

A quick test shows that git config status.branch true works as well, to show the branch information in conjunction with short-format.

---

It was reversed for a time:

Commit 908a0e6b98e5a7c4b299b3643823bdefb4fa512e:

It makes it impossible to "git commit" when status.short is set, and also "git status --porcelain" output is affected by status.branch.

But it is now back, still for git 1.8.4 (July/August 2013)

See commit f0915cbaf476d63f72c284057680809ed24fbe0d:

commit: make it work with status.short

With "status.short" set, it is now impossible to commit with status.short set, because it acts like "git commit --short", and it is impossible to differentiate between a status_format set by the command-line option parser versus that set by the config parser.

To alleviate this problem, clear status_format as soon as the config parser has finished its work.

Signed-off-by: Ramkumar Ramachandra

Answer 2

Use a different alias. Instead of trying to alias 'status', do:

git config --global alias.s 'status --short'

Now "git s" gives you short output, and "git status" gives you long output.

Answer 3

The easiest way is to use another alias, as I suggest in my comment. I think there is no way to create an alias with the name of a built-in command. If you insist on using git status, another option is (git is open source after all):

• get the git source code (e.g. http://github.com/git/git/)
• open the file builtin/commit.c
• look for the function int cmd_status(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix)
• at the bottom you find a switch-statement
• comment out the two lines as shown in the following code
• add the line as in the following code

code:

...
switch (status_format) {
    case STATUS_FORMAT_SHORT:
        wt_shortstatus_print(&s, null_termination);
        break;
    case STATUS_FORMAT_PORCELAIN:
        wt_porcelain_print(&s, null_termination);
        break;
    case STATUS_FORMAT_LONG:
        //s.verbose = verbose;      <--lines have to be commented out
        //wt_status_print(&s);
        wt_shortstatus_print(&s, null_termination);    //<-- line has to be added
        break;
    } 
 ...

• remake git

Answer 4

You may create an alias.

But I'd create bash script:

#!/bin/bash
git status --short

save this script in ~/bin/gits (or /usr/bin/gits and chmod 555), so typing gits gives what you want.