How to compare a local git branch with its remote branch

Question

How can I see the diff between a local branch and a remote branch

User · Answer

If you re on a given branch  and you want to compare your working copy with the upstream branch you re tracking  use  git diff   upstream   If you want to compare your current HEAD with the upstream branch  thanks  Arijoon   git diff     upstream   If your upstream isn t set  you can use   push  to get a diff against the branch you are set to push to  also from  Arijoon s comment   git diff   push   Courtesy of this answer  the git documentation for specifying revisions has    lt branchname gt   upstream   e g  master  upstream     u  The suffix   upstream  to a branchname  short form  lt branchname gt   u   refers to the branch that the branch specified by branchname is set to build on top of  configured with branch  lt name gt  remote and branch  lt name gt  merge   A missing branchname defaults to the current one

User · Answer

git diff  lt local branch gt   lt remote gt   lt remote branch gt   For example git diff main origin main  or git diff featureA origin next Of course to have said remote-tracking branch you need to git fetch first  and you need it to have up to date information about branches in remote repository

User · Answer

In VS 2019  just do FETCH Do not pull code   This is what I did  Added below in  gitconfig file so that I can use Beyond Compare  File location  C  Users  username   gitconfig   Added below   diff      tool   bc  difftool  bc       path   c  Program Files Beyond Compare 4 bcomp exe   Open command prompt and go to working directory  I gave below to compare local DEV branch to remote DEV branch  git difftool dev origin dev --dir-diff   This will open Beyond Compare and open directories which have files that differ  If no changes Beyond Compare will not launch

User · Answer

This is quite simple  You can use  git diff remote my topic branch my topic branch  Where my topic branch is your topic branch

User · Answer

For count of different commits from HEAD to origin master   git remote update git rev-list HEAD  origin master --count  To get current HEAD commit hash id   git rev-parse HEAD  To get remote origin master commit hash id   git rev-parse origin master

User · Answer

tl dr  git diff  lt local branch gt   lt remote branch gt   When using git on the shell  I like to first orient myself by looking around   Here s a command to show all branches    git branch -a     or git branch --all     my-branch   master   remotes origin some-branch   remotes origin HEAD - gt  origin master   remotes origin my-branch   remotes origin some-other-branch   remotes origin master   Here I have two local branches  my-branch and master  and 4 remote  some-branch  some-other-branch  master  and my-branch    Also  the asterisk next to my-branch signals the fact that I m currently in that branch  you would also know that by using the command git status that would output  On branch my-branch     Note  the remote branches in the git bash shell are shown in red while the local ones are shown in green    If you just want to show remote branches     git branch -r    or git branch --remotes    origin some-branch   origin HEAD - gt  origin master   origin my-branch   origin some-other-branch   origin master   To show just local branches you might be tempted to use git branch -l but that s a completely different command  To show local branches use git branch with no options    git branch   my-branch    master   To complete a review of the basic branch options there s the --list that contrary to what you might expect is there to allow filtering  Use it with a pattern like this     git branch --list  my     my-branch   You can also combine --list with the options -a and -r but make sure to adapt your pattern accordingly  remember  remote branches start with  remotes    Example     this will show all branches  local  amp  remote  that start with my   git branch --list  my   -a   my-branch    better  the pattern includes the remote   git branch --list   my   -a   my-branch   remotes origin my-branch   Docs  https   git-scm com docs git-branch  Now you can compare any two branches from all the available ones  you can also compare two locals or two remotes     Here I m comparing the local with the remote my-branch  they re synchronized so I don t get any output     git diff my-branch remotes origin my-branch   Note  you have to give the full names of the branches with no quotation marks   I can also compare the local my-branch to the remote master  Here I get some output because the remote my-branch hasn t been merged into the master branch     git diff my-branch remotes origin master diff --git a src controllers call controller js b src controllers call controller js index fd79b98  df3d798 100644 --- a src controllers call controller js     b src controllers call controller js    -261 7  261 7    function callController                  Function  doCall

User · Answer

Let s say you have already set up your origin as the remote repository  Then   git diff  lt local branch gt   lt origin gt   lt remote branch name gt

User · Answer

Here is a shorthand answer if you are comparing your current branch and to something you want to git pull   git fetch git diff FETCH HEAD   The first command will figure out which remote branch corresponds to your current branch  An artifact of that calculation in the FETCH HEAD reference  Then the second command uses that reference compare versus what your current branch has

User · Answer

To update remote-tracking branches  you need to type git fetch first and then   git diff  lt mainbranch path gt   lt remotebranch path gt   You can git branch -a to list all branches  local and remote  then choose branch name from list  just remove remotes  from remote branch name  Example  git diff main origin main  where  quot main quot  is local main branch and  quot origin main quot  is a remote namely origin and main branch

User · Answer

The easy way   git fetch git log -p HEAD  FETCH HEAD   This will first fetch the changes from your default remote  origin   This will be created automatically when you clone a repo  You can also be explicit  git fetch origin master   Then git log is used to compare your current branch with the one just fetched   The -p  generate patch  option is what shows the differences

User · Answer

If you use TortoiseGit  it provides GUI for Git   you can right click your Git repo folder then click Git Sync   You can select your branches to compare if not selected  Than you can view differences commit  You can also right click any commit then Compare with previous revision to view differences side by side

User · Answer

I know there are several answers to this question already but I was getting an odd error when trying most of them   In my case I have a second remote called heroku that is not the origin and because it wasn t in sync I got this error when trying to run the git diff master heroku master   fatal  ambiguous argument  heroku master   unknown revision or path not in the working tree   or this when trying the other approach git diff master  heroku master   fatal  bad revision  master  heroku master   The solution was explicitly mentioning the remote name on git fetch before running git diff  in my case     git fetch heroku   git diff master heroku master   Hope that helps others with this same issue

User · Answer

I wonder about is there any change in my master branch     Firstly  you need to change your branch  If you are already under this branch  you do not need to do this     git checkout master   You can see which file has been modified under your master branch by this command   git status   List the branches   git branch -a  master remotes origin master    Find the differences   git diff origin master

User · Answer

In android studio  it is possible to see the difference between branches using graphical interface  Select your remote branch and and  quot Compare with current quot  from the list  From then you can select the files tab to see if there are any files that have content difference between both branches  If no file is seen  then both branches are up-to-date with each other

User · Answer

Setup  git config alias udiff   diff   u    Diffing HEAD with HEAD  upstream   git fetch    Do this if you want to compare with the network state of upstream  if the current local state is enough  you can skip this git udiff   Diffing with an Arbitrary Remote Branch  This answers the question in your heading   its remote    if you want to diff against  a remote   that isn t configured as the upstream for the branch   you need to target it directly   You can see all remote branches with the following   git branch -r  You can see all configured remotes with the following   git remote show  You can see the branch tracking configuration for a single remote  e g  origin  as follows   git remote show origin  Once you determine the appropriate origin branch  just do a normal diff     git diff  MY LOCAL  MY REMOTE BRANCH

User · Answer

Let your working branch is development and want to differentiate between local development branch and remote development branch  that case  syntax should be like git diff remotes origin development  development                   or   git fetch origin  git diff origin development

User · Answer

I understand much better the output of   git diff  lt remote-tracking branch gt   lt local branch gt   that shows me what is going to be dropped and what is going to be added if I push the local branch  Of course it is the same  just the inverse  but for me is more readable and I m more confortable looking at what is going to happen

User · Answer

Example  git diff  master   testlocalBranch    If you are using editor like webstorm  you can right click on file select compare with branch and type select your branch

User · Answer

git difftool  lt commit gt      This will compare the commit you want with your local files  Don t forget the dot in the end  for local    For example  to compare your local files with some commit      git difftool 1db1ef2490733c1877ad0fb5e8536d2935566341      and you don t need git fetch  unless comparing to new commits is needed

User · Answer

If you want to see the difference as just the names of the files changed then use    git diff --name-status  lt remote-branch gt   lt local-branch gt     else this would show all differences between the two branches   git diff  lt remote-branch gt   lt local-branch gt

User · Answer

try   git diff origin HEAD   Assuming you want to diff you current Local branch s HEAD against the origin   And assuming you are on the local branch

User · Answer

This is how I do it    To update your local  git fetch --all   this will fetch everything from the remote  so when you check difference  it will compare the difference with the remote branch    to list all branches git branch -a   the above command will display all the branches    to go to the branch you want to check difference git checkout  lt branch name gt   to check on which branch you are in  use git branch      or  git status   Now  you can check difference as follows   git diff origin  lt branch name gt    this will compare your local branch with the remote branch

User · Answer

First type  git branch -a   to get the list of available branches  On the output you may see something like    master   remotes main master   remotes origin HEAD - gt  origin master   remotes origin master   remotes origin mt   remotes upstream master   remotes upstream mt   Then show the diff  git diff --stat --color remotes main master  origin master git diff remotes main master  origin master

[git] How to compare a local git branch with its remote branch?

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