Patricio Treviño · 05 June, 2018 · 2 min read

Get the delta between two git branches

Syntax

git diff [options] <commit>[..<commit>] [--] [<path>...]

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Option	Description
options	The differen options that can be used to report the differences
commit	An arbitrary commit/branch to be compared.
commit	The second commit/branch to be compared, if omitted then HEAD (of the current branch) is used.
path...	If path is specified, then the comparison happens at the file level instead of commit/branch level.

Note: common options are
--minimal, spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced.
--summary, output a condensed summary of extended header information such as creations, renames and mode changes.
--name-only, show only names of changed files.
--name-status, show only names and status of changed files.
--diff-filter, select only files that are:
Added (A) Copied (C) Deleted (D) Modified (M) Renamed (R) Changed (T) Unmerged (U) Unknown (X) airing Broken (B)

Example

      
        # get delta between HEAD and origin/master displaying status and name of the files
      
        git diff --name-status origin/master
      
        # get delta between HEAd and origin/master displaying status and name of the files and showing only added files
      
        git diff --name-status --diff-filter A origin/master

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References

git-diff

	# get delta between HEAD and origin/master displaying status and name of the files
	git diff --name-status origin/master

	# get delta between HEAd and origin/master displaying status and name of the files and showing only added files
	git diff --name-status --diff-filter A origin/master