git ls-files Command: List Tracked Files in CI

git ls-files prints the files Git knows about in the index, with filters for state.

When a CI step needs to operate on exactly the files Git tracks (and skip vendored or ignored ones), ls-files is faster and safer than find because it already respects .gitignore.

Common flags

(default) - list cached (tracked) files
-m / --modified - list files modified in the working tree
-o --exclude-standard - list untracked files honoring .gitignore
-d / --deleted - list deleted files
-z - NUL-separate output for safe handling of unusual filenames
-- <pathspec> - restrict to matching paths

Example

shell

# Lint only tracked shell scripts, NUL-safe
git ls-files -z -- '*.sh' | xargs -0 -r shellcheck

In CI

ls-files is the reliable way to enumerate tracked files for linters and formatters because it ignores build artifacts and gitignored paths automatically. Pair -z with xargs -0 so filenames with spaces do not break the pipeline.

Key takeaways

git ls-files lists only tracked files, automatically skipping ignored artifacts.
Use -z with xargs -0 to handle unusual filenames safely.
It is a cleaner input for linters than find, which does not know about .gitignore.