I would like to use "git diff" to show differences between the current state of a git repository and a normal directory tree somewhere on the filesystem, ie. one without a .git subdirectory. This is proving surprisingly hard to do.
git diff has a documented mode to compare general "paths" as they call it: the --no-index option. But when I try it like this inside a git repo, git diff --no-index . /somedir git apparently "forgets" that the current directory is a repo, and just basically apes diff -r. This means it doesn't know which files are tracked, and in particular it reports every freaking file under ./.git as deleted. And there is no exclude option that I see. Argh! How can I get around this? If it matters: I'm fine with assuming the repo is clean ie. no uncommitted changes, so the current state can be represented as any of: working tree, "index" or HEAD. -- Please don't Cc: me privately on mailing lists and Usenet, if you also post the followup to the list or newsgroup. To reply privately _only_ on Usenet, fetch the TXT record for the domain.
