Let's say I cloned a repository and started modifying files. I know that if I have local uncommitted changes, I can do a diff as follows git diff test.txt and it will show me the difference between the current local HEAD and the modified, uncommitted changes in the file. If I commit those changes I can diff it against the original repository by using git diff master origin/master
But is there any way of diff'ing the local changes with the original repository on the server before committing locally? I tried various permutations of git diff --cached master origin/master with no luck.
Given that the remote repository has been cached via git fetch it should be possible to compare against these commits. Try the following:
$ git fetch origin
$ git diff origin/master