Check Git Status Across All Your Projects with This Bash Script

I usually work across multiple computers for both personal and professional projects, so I keep (almost) everything on GitHub. There, I store not only software projects but also my notes (organized using the Zettelkasten method — more on that in a future post!). I also host various personal files, such as music sheets that I edit with MuseScore. Another key repository is a directory with all my configuration files (dotfiles) for tools I use daily — Neovim, tiling window managers, bash, zsh, terminals, and more. I manage these using the legendary GNU tool stow.

Keeping all my repositories up-to-date is essential for my daily workflow. If I forget to push changes, I risk running into annoying merge conflicts. That’s why I wrote this bash script to automatically check the status of all my git repositories.

How it checks the specified directories

I usually keep my projects inside a directory called repos/. However, some repositories live elsewhere. For instance, I store my configuration files in ~/.dotfiles, and when I fork Neovim plugins, I place them in ~/.local/share/nvim/lazy/ — the directory used by Neovim’s lazy.nvim. One such example is my fork of the kanagawa colorscheme.

That’s why I declare several directory variables at the beginning of the script. The base_dir is iterated over, while the others are individual repositories assumed to contain a .git/ directory.

Here’s how those directories are declared:

base_dir="/home/daniel/Documentos/repos"
dotfiles="/home/daniel/.dotfiles/"
notas="/home/daniel/Documentos/Notas/"
kanagawa="/home/daniel/.local/share/nvim/lazy/kanagawa.nvim"

Styles

There are a couple of things that I used for making it clean and readable. I have two variables for having bold and normal fonts using tput:

# Font Styles
bold=$(tput bold)
normal=$(tput sgr0)

I also used separators:

echo "--------------------------------------------------------------------------"

And two emojis: ✅ and ⚠️.

The logic

The script is pretty simple. It includes a function that checks each repository’s status and prints a friendly summary:

check_git_status() {
  local dir="$1"
  local label="$2"

  if ! git -C "$dir" rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree > /dev/null 2>&1; then
    printf "%-40s %-30s\n" "${bold}$label:${normal}" "${bold}❌ That's not a Git repository${normal}"
    return
  fi

  local status=$(git -C "$dir" status)
  local shortstatus=$(git -C "$dir" status --short)

  if [[ $status =~ "nothing to commit, working tree clean" ]]; then
    printf "%-40s %-30s\n" "${bold}$label:${normal}" "${bold}✅ Updated${normal}"
  else
    printf "%-40s %-30s\n" "${bold}$label:${normal}" "${bold}⚠️  Pending changes${normal}"
    echo "$shortstatus"
  fi
}

Note: If your system’s default language isn’t English, you’ll need to modify the condition that matches git status output. For example, in Spanish:

  # Spanish
if [[ $status =~ "nada para hacer commit, el árbol de trabajo está limpio" ]]; then

The following loop iterates over all directories inside base_dir:

# Iteration in the base_dir
for dir in "$base_dir"/*; do
  dir_name=$(basename "$dir")
  if [ -d "$dir" ]; then
    check_git_status "$dir" "$dir_name"
  fi
done

Then, the script checks each of the individually declared directories:

echo "--------------------------------------------------------------------------"

if [ -d "$dotfiles" ]; then
  check_git_status "$dotfiles" "Configuration files"
fi

echo "--------------------------------------------------------------------------"

if [ -d "$notas" ]; then
  check_git_status "$notas" "Notas"
fi

echo "--------------------------------------------------------------------------"

if [ -d "$kanagawa" ]; then
  check_git_status "$kanagawa" "kanagawa"
fi

The complete script

So here is the full script:

#!/bin/bash

# Defines directories that are going to be used
base_dir="/home/daniel/Documentos/repos"
dotfiles="/home/daniel/.dotfiles/"
notas="/home/daniel/Documentos/Notas/"
kanagawa="/home/daniel/.local/share/nvim/lazy/kanagawa.nvim"

# Font Styles
bold=$(tput bold)
normal=$(tput sgr0)


check_git_status() {
  local dir="$1"
  local label="$2"

  if ! git -C "$dir" rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree > /dev/null 2>&1; then
    printf "%-40s %-30s\n" "${bold}$label:${normal}" "${bold}❌ That's not a Git repository${normal}"
    return
  fi

  local status=$(git -C "$dir" status)
  local shortstatus=$(git -C "$dir" status --short)

  if [[ $status =~ "nothing to commit, working tree clean" ]]; then
    printf "%-40s %-30s\n" "${bold}$label:${normal}" "${bold}✅ Updated${normal}"
  else
    printf "%-40s %-30s\n" "${bold}$label:${normal}" "${bold}⚠️  Pending changes${normal}"
    echo "$shortstatus"
  fi
}


# Iteration in the base_dir
for dir in "$base_dir"/*; do
  dir_name=$(basename "$dir")
  if [ -d "$dir" ]; then
    check_git_status "$dir" "$dir_name"
  fi
done

echo "--------------------------------------------------------------------------"

if [ -d "$dotfiles" ]; then
  check_git_status "$dotfiles" "Configuration files"
fi

echo "--------------------------------------------------------------------------"

if [ -d "$notas" ]; then
  check_git_status "$notas" "Notas"
fi

echo "--------------------------------------------------------------------------"

if [ -d "$kanagawa" ]; then
  check_git_status "$kanagawa" "kanagawa"
fi

And this would be the output of it!

backend-fullstack-open:          ✅ Updated
clothing-store-api-rest:         ✅ Updated
d-penedo:                        ✅ Updated
empleo:                          ✅ Updated
escuela-de-columna:              ✅ Updated
fullstackopen:                   ✅ Updated
generadorDeComprobantes:         ✅ Updated
jolastoki:                       ✅ Updated
lista-tareas-sqlite:             ✅ Updated
matafuegos-mar-del-plata:        ✅ Updated
Mooc-Java:                       ✅ Updated
pomodb:                          ✅ Updated
tutoriales:                      ✅ Updated
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Configuration files:             ⚠️  Pending changes
 M bin/.local/bin/estatus
 M kitty/.config/kitty/current-theme.conf
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notas:                           ⚠️  Pending changes
 M Proyectos/dPenedo-blog/Posts/Template.md
?? Proyectos/dPenedo-blog/Posts/Check-the-status-on-all-your-repositories-by-this-bash-script.md
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
kanagawa:                        ⚠️  Pending changes
 M lua/kanagawa/colors.lua
 M lua/kanagawa/highlights/editor.lua

Check Git Status Across Your Projects with This Bash Script

Check Git Status Across All Your Projects with This Bash Script

How it checks the specified directories

Styles

The logic

The complete script