How to properly show current diff stats in shell prompt and code editor?

[blahgeek]

Many git users use some scripts to show current diff stats in the shell prompt (e.g. Hostname ~/xxx (master|✚1) $, meaning current branch is master and there's one file changed), as well as showing diff status in the code editor (e.g. red & green annotations at the left of the editor, indicating if certain lines are added or modified).

With jj, while we can implement such features using jj status, jj diff etc, should we enable --ignore-working-copy for such scenarios?

On the one hand, since these use cases requires running jj frequently in the background, using --ignore-working-copy should prevent conflicting and reduce unnecessary committing.

On the other hand, using --ignore-working-copy means that the working-copy is stalled, so the diff stats cannot be accurate.

What's the proper way to do this?

[martinvonz]

Perhaps it's going to be --no-commit-transaction once that's available (#2562).

[blahgeek]

Thanks, that make sense.

I have another question : apparently, (for git colocated repos), git diff HEAD can be used in this case to show the changes of @ and possible uncommitted changes. Is it always true? Is it a behavior users can rely on in the foreseeable future ?

[martinvonz]

Yes, I think you can rely on that. git diff is a perhaps bit closer to jj diff --git, at least when you're editing a merge commit.