How do I see the commit differences between branches in git

Question

I m on branch-X and have added a couple more commits on top of it  I want to see all the differences between MASTER and the branch that I am on in terms of commits  I could just do a   git checkout master git log   and then a   git checkout branch-X git log   and visually diff these  but I m hoping for an easier  less error-prone method

User · Answer

bin bash if   2        then   a  1   b  2   alog   echo  a   tr      -   log   blog   echo  b   tr      -   log   git log --oneline  a  gt   alog   git log --oneline  b  gt   blog   diff  alog  blog fi   Contributing this because it allows a and b logs to be diff ed visually  side by side  if you have a visual diff tool  Replace diff command at end with command to start visual diff tool

User · Answer

If you are on Linux  gitg is way to go to do it very quickly and graphically   If you insist on command line you can use   git log --oneline --decorate   To make git log nicer by default  I typically set these global preferences   git config --global log decorate true git config --global log abbrevCommit true

User · Answer

You can easily do that with  git log master  branch-X   That will show you commits that branch-X has but master doesn t

User · Answer

If you want to compare based on the commit messages  you can do the following   git fetch git log --oneline origin master   cut -d    -f2-  gt  master log git log --oneline origin branch-X   cut -d    -f2-  gt  branchx log diff  lt  sort master log   lt  sort branchx log

User · Answer

I think it is matter of choice and context I prefer to use   git log origin master  origin develop --oneline --no-merges   It will display commits in develop which are not in master branch   If you want to see which files are actually modified use   git diff --stat origin master  origin develop --no-merges   If you don t specify arguments it will display the full diff  If you want to see visual diff  install meld on linux  or WinMerge on windows  Make sure they are the default difftools  Then use something like  git difftool -y origin master  origin develop --no-merges   In case you want to compare it with current branch  It is more convenient to use HEAD instead of branch name like use   git fetch git log origin master  HEAD --oneline --no-merges   It will show you all the commits  about to be merged

User · Answer

I d suggest the following to see the difference  in commits   For symmetric difference  repeat the command with inverted args   git cherry -v master  your branch  or HEAD as default

User · Answer

You can get a really nice  visual output of how your branches differ with this  git log --graph --pretty format   Cred h Creset - C yellow  d Creset  s  Cgreen  cr  Creset  --abbrev-commit --date relative master  branch-X

User · Answer

I used some of the answers and found one that fit my case   make sure all tasks are in the release branch     Other methods works as well but I found that they might add lines that I do not need  like merge commits that add no value   git fetch git log origin master  origin release-1 1 --oneline --no-merges   or you can compare your current with master  git fetch git log origin master  HEAD --oneline --no-merges   git fetch is there to make sure you are using updated info   In this way each commit will be on a line and you can copy paste that into an text editor and start comparing the tasks with the commits that will be merged

User · Answer

Not the perfect answer but works better for people using Github   Go to your repo  Insights - gt  Network

User · Answer

if you want to use gitk   gitk master  branch-X   it has a nice old school GUi

[git] How do I see the commit differences between branches in git?

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