git visual diff between branches

Question

This answer is great for seeing a visual diff between two files that are checked into git  How do I view   39 git diff  39  output with a visual diff program    However  I d like to see a visual diff between two branches  So far  my best bet seems to be    git diff --name-status master dev   which isn t very informative and not very visual   Is there anything better out there

User · Answer

Have a look at git show-branch  There s a lot you can do with core git functionality  It might be good to specify what you d like to include in your visual diff  Most answers focus on line-by-line diffs of commits  where your example focuses on names of files affected in a given commit   One visual that seems not to be addressed is how to see the commits that branches contain  whether in common or uniquely    For this visual  I m a big fan of git show-branch  it breaks out a well organized table of commits per branch back to the common ancestor  - to try it on a repo with multiple branches with divergences  just type git show-branch and check the output - for a writeup with examples  see Compare Commits Between Git Branches

User · Answer

For those of you on Windows using TortoiseGit  you can get a somewhat visual comparison through this rather obscure feature    Navigate to the folder you want to compare Hold down shift and right-click it Go to TortoiseGit -  Browse Reference Use ctrl to select two branches to compare Right-click your selection and click  Compare selected refs    Source  http   wikgren fi compare-diff-branches-in-tortoise-git-or-how-to-preview-changes-before-doing-a-merge

User · Answer

In case you are using Intellij Idea IDE  you could just use the compare option in the branch

User · Answer

If you use the excellent WebStorm editor  you can compare with any branch you d like

User · Answer

If you re using github you can use the website for this   github com url to your repo compare SHA of tip of one branch   SHA of tip of another branch  That will show you a compare of the two

User · Answer

Try  difftool   assuming you have diff tools setup  - see https   www kernel org pub software scm git docs git-difftool html  I find name status good for the summary but difftool will iterate the changes  and the -d option gives you the directory view   e g     git difftool their-branch my-branch  Viewing   file1 txt  Launch  bc3   Y n         Or as  rsilva4 mentioned with -d and default to your current branch it is just - e g  compare to master      git difftool -d master        and yes - there are many variations - https   www kernel org pub software scm git docs git-reset html

User · Answer

UPDATE  Mac  I now use SourceTree  Thoroughly recommended  I especially like the way you can stage   unstage hunks   Linux  I ve had success with    smartgit GitKraken meld   E g  to install smartgit on Ubuntu    download the  deb from https   www syntevo com smartgit download  install with sudo dpkg -i  path to deb      This does the job    git-diffall with a GUI diff tool like meld  See point 5 here   http   rubyglazed com post 15772234418 git-ify-your-command-line  There s a nice post about git and meld here  http   nathanhoad net how-to-meld-for-git-diffs-in-ubuntu-hardy

User · Answer

You can also use vscode to compare branches using extension CodeLense  this is already answered in this SO  How to compare different branches on Visual studio code

User · Answer

You can use the free P4Merge from Perforce to do this as well  http   www perforce com product components perforce-visual-merge-and-diff-tools  Details on integrating it with Git can be found here and here but a quick summary from the above links is   Put the following bits in your    gitconfig  and then you can do   git mergetool and   git difftool to use p4merge Note that   git diff will still just use the default inline diff viewer     tested with git version 1 8 2   Changes for  gitconfig  merge    keepBackup   false     tool   p4merge  mergetool  quot p4merge quot       cmd    Applications p4merge app Contents Resources launchp4merge  quot   quot  PWD  BASE  quot  quot   quot   quot  PWD  REMOTE  quot  quot   quot   quot  PWD  LOCAL  quot  quot   quot   quot  PWD  MERGED  quot  quot      keepTemporaries   false     trustExitCode   false     keepBackup   false  diff      tool   p4merge  difftool  quot p4merge quot       cmd    Applications p4merge app Contents Resources launchp4merge  quot   quot  REMOTE  quot  quot   quot   quot  LOCAL  quot  quot

User · Answer

Use git diff with a range   git diff branch1  branch2   This will compare the tips of each branch   If you really want some GUI software  you can try something like SourceTree which supports Mac OS X and Windows

User · Answer

You can also do this easily with gitk    gt  gitk branch1 branch2   First click on the tip of branch1  Now right-click on the tip of branch2 and select Diff this- selected

User · Answer

In GitExtensions you can select both branches in revision grid with Ctrl pressed  Then you can see files that differ between those branches  When you select a file you will see diff for it   Taken from here

User · Answer

If you use Eclipse you can visually compare your current branch on the workspace with another tag branch

User · Answer

If you are using OSX or Windows 7   Atlassian SourceTree works very well for this   It is free    You can see staged changes in a side-by-side diff setup  and you easily compare local with remote and any other two branches   When multiple files are selected  the diff shows up as below     Assuming you have checked out a feature branch and you want to see the diff against  master   right-click on the  master  branch and select  Diff against current   Unfortunately  it doesn t seem as if it will be available on  nix distributions anytime soon

User · Answer

Here is how to see the visual diff between whole commits  as opposed to single files  in Visual Studio  tested in VS 2017   Unfortunately  it works only for commits within one branch  In the  Team Explorer   choose the  Branches  view  right-click on the repo  and choose  View history  as in the following image      Then the history of the current branch appears in the main area   Where branches that ended as earlier commits on the current branch are marked by labels   Now select a couple of commits with Ctrl-Left  then right click and select  Compare Commits     from the pop-up menu    For more on comparing branches in the Microsoft world  see this stackoverflow question  Differences between git branches using Visual Studio

User · Answer

To see a visual diff of all differences between two branches I like to merge the two branches - WITHOUT committing the merge - and then use git gui or git Extensions to get an overview of the differences   Git command line for merging without commiting    git checkout branchA git merge --no-commit --no-ff branchB     Then when done  you can undo the merge with   git merge --abort    h t to  jcugat s for the comment

[git] git visual diff between branches

Have a look at `git show-branch`

Examples related to git

Examples related to diff