See list of modified files in repo folder

Absolutely! Let's break down this full command character by character and explain each flag, each component, and what it does:

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🔧 FULL COMMAND:

repo forall -c 'git status --short | while read status file; do echo "$(pwd)/$file"; done'

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✅ High-Level Goal:

This command prints the absolute paths of all modified or untracked files in your current AOSP repo working tree.

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📌 PART 1: repo forall -c '...'

1️⃣ repo

• A command-line tool provided by AOSP (Android Open Source Project) to manage multiple Git repositories under one parent tree.

2️⃣ forall

• Tells repo to run a command for each project (each Git repo) in your workspace.

3️⃣ -c

• Short for command.

• Tells repo to run the command you provide in single quotes '...' inside each project directory.

• That command will execute in the context of each project directory, i.e., the shell will cd into that project folder first.

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📌 PART 2: 'git status --short | while read status file; do echo "$(pwd)/$file"; done'

This is the actual shell command run inside each Git project.

🔹 git status --short

🔸 git

• Invokes Git, the version control system.

🔸 status

• Shows the current status of the working directory and staging area (like changes to tracked and untracked files).

🔸 --short

• Provides output in a compact format. Each line shows:

  • 2-character status (staged/unstaged/untracked etc.)

  • Followed by the relative path of the file.

🧠 Example output of git status --short:

 M Android.bp
?? libs/mpl/

🔹 |

• This pipe symbol takes the output of the left command (git status --short) and feeds it as input to the command on the right (while read ...).

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🔹 while read status file; do ...; done

🔸 while read status file; do ...; done

• A shell while-loop that reads each line from the input (here from git status --short).

• Each line is split into:

  • status – the first column (like M, ??, etc.)

  • file – the file path (like Android.bp)

💡 read will break a line into variables separated by whitespace. So in each loop iteration:

• status holds the two-character Git status

• file holds the relative file path

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🔹 echo "$(pwd)/$file"

🔸 echo

• Prints a string to stdout (terminal).

🔸 "$(pwd)/$file"

• "$(pwd)":

  • Executes the pwd command (print working directory).

  • This gives the absolute path of the current project folder being processed by repo forall.

• "$file":

  • Appends the relative file path from git status output.

🔄 The combined string is:

<absolute-path-to-project>/<file-name>

For example, if:

• Current directory = /media/shreyas/AOSP/OperatorPreferenceMenu

• File = Android.bp

Then:

/media/shreyas/AOSP/OperatorPreferenceMenu/Android.bp

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🔄 FLOW DIAGRAM SUMMARY:

1. repo forall -c '...' ➜ Loop through all Git projects in AOSP workspace.

2. Inside each project: ➜ Run git status --short ➜ Output like: M Android.bp

3. Pipe it into while read status file; do ... done ➜ For each line, extract status and file name

4. For each file: ➜ Run echo "$(pwd)/$file" ➜ Prints absolute path of the modified or untracked file.

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🧪 Example:

Let's say your repo workspace is in:

/home/user/aosp

And inside OperatorPreferenceMenu, you modified Android.bp.

Then this command would output:

/home/user/aosp/OperatorPreferenceMenu/Android.bp

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📌 Notes:

• This command doesn't list unchanged files.

• It only shows files that are modified (M), added (A), deleted (D), or untracked (??) in each Git repo.

• You can use this to script or locate modified files across a huge AOSP tree.

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Would you like a version of this command that includes the Git status symbol along with the absolute path too?