How to diff one file to an arbitrary version in Git

Question

How can I diff a file  say pom xml  from the master branch to an arbitrary older version in Git

User · Answer

Generic Syntax      git diff oldCommit  newCommit --   FileName xml  gt    diff txt   for all files named  FileName xml  anywhere in your repo   Notice the space between  --  and       Answer for your question    git checkout master  git diff oldCommit  HEAD --   pom xml  or  git diff oldCommit  HEAD -- relative path to pom xml    as always with git  you can use a tag sha1  HEAD   to id a commit   Tested with git 1 9 1 on Ubuntu

User · Answer

You can do   git diff master 20 pom xml pom xml       to compare your current pom xml to the one from master 20 revisions ago through the first parent   You can replace master 20  of course  with the object name  SHA1sum  of a commit or any of the many other ways of specifying a revision   Note that this is actually comparing the old pom xml to the version in your working tree  not the version committed in master   If you want that  then you can do the following instead   git diff master 20 pom xml master pom xml

User · Answer

If you are fine using a graphical tool  or even prefer it  you can   gitk pom xml   In gitk you can then click any commit  to  select  it  and right click any other commit to select  Diff this -  selected  or  Diff selected -  this  in the popup menu  depending on what order you prefer

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If you want to see the difference between the last commit of a single file you can do   git log -p -1 filename   This will give you the diff of the file in git  is not comparing your local file

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If you need to diff on a single file in a stash for example you can do  git diff stash  0  -- path to file

User · Answer

For comparing to 5 commit to the current one  both on master  just simply do   git diff master 5 pom xml master pom xml   Also you can refer to commit hash number  for example if the hash number is x110bd64  you can do something like this to  see the difference   git diff x110bd64 pom xml

User · Answer

git diff  lt revision gt   lt path gt    For example   git diff b0d14a4 foobar txt

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git diff -w HEAD origin master path to file

User · Answer

If neither commit is your HEAD then bash s brace expansion proves really useful  especially if your filenames are long  the example above   git diff master 20 pom xml master pom xml   Would become  git diff  master 20 master  pom xml   More on Brace expansion with bash

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For people interested in doing the same from GitHub  see comparing commits across time

User · Answer

git diff master 20 -- pom xml   Works if you are not in master branch too

User · Answer

If you are looking for the diff on a specific commit and you want to use the github UI instead of the command line  say you want to link it to other folks   you can do   https   github com  lt org gt   lt repo gt  commit  lt commit-sha gt   lt path-to-file gt    For example   https   github com grails grails-core commit 02942c5b4d832b856fbc04c186f1d02416895a7e grails-test-suite-uber build gradle  Note the Previous and Next links at the top right that allow you to navigate through all the files in the commit    This only works for a specific commit though  not for comparing between any two arbitrary versions

User · Answer

To see what was changed in a file in the last commit  git diff HEAD 1 path to file  You can change the number   1  to the n-th commit which you want to diff with

[git] How to diff one file to an arbitrary version in Git?

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