GIT-DIFF-TREE(1) Git Manual GIT-DIFF-TREE(1)NAMEgit-diff-tree - Compares the content and mode of blobs found via two
tree objects
SYNOPSISgit-diff-tree [--stdin] [-m] [-s] [-v] [--no-commit-id] [--pretty]
[-t] [-r] [-c | --cc] [--root] [<common diff options>]
<tree-ish> [<tree-ish>] [<path>...]
DESCRIPTION
Compares the content and mode of the blobs found via two tree objects.
If there is only one <tree-ish> given, the commit is compared with its
parents (see --stdin below).
Note that "git-diff-tree" can use the tree encapsulated in a commit
object.
OPTIONS-p Generate patch (see section on generating patches).
-u Synonym for "-p".
-U<n> Shorthand for "--unified=<n>".
--unified=<n>
Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of the usual
three. Implies "-p".
--raw Generate the raw format. This is the default.
--patch-with-raw
Synonym for "-p --raw".
--stat[=width[,name-width]]
Generate a diffstat. You can override the default output width
for 80-column terminal by "--stat=width". The width of the
filename part can be controlled by giving another width to it
separated by a comma.
--numstat
Similar to --stat, but shows number of added and deleted lines
in decimal notation and pathname without abbreviation, to make
it more machine friendly. For binary files, outputs two -
instead of saying 0 0.
--shortstat
Output only the last line of the --stat format containing total
number of modified files, as well as number of added and deleted
lines.
--dirstat[=limit]
Output only the sub-directories that are impacted by a diff, and
to what degree they are impacted. You can override the default
cut-off in percent (3) by "--dirstat=limit". If you want to
enable "cumulative" directory statistics, you can use the
"--cumulative" flag, which adds up percentages recursively even
when they have been already reported for a sub-directory.
--summary
Output a condensed summary of extended header information such
as creations, renames and mode changes.
--patch-with-stat
Synonym for "-p --stat".
-z NUL-line termination on output. This affects the --raw output
field terminator. Also output from commands such as "git-log"
will be delimited with NUL between commits.
--name-only
Show only names of changed files.
--name-status
Show only names and status of changed files. See the description
of the --diff-filter option on what the status letters mean.
--color
Show colored diff.
--no-color
Turn off colored diff, even when the configuration file gives
the default to color output.
--color-words
Show colored word diff, i.e. color words which have changed.
--no-renames
Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration file
gives the default to do so.
--check
Warn if changes introduce trailing whitespace or an indent that
uses a space before a tab. Exits with non-zero status if
problems are found. Not compatible with --exit-code.
--full-index
Instead of the first handful characters, show full object name
of pre- and post-image blob on the "index" line when generating
a patch format output.
--binary
In addition to --full-index, output "binary diff" that can be
applied with "git apply".
--abbrev[=<n>]
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name in
diff-raw format output and diff-tree header lines, show only
handful hexdigits prefix. This is independent of --full-index
option above, which controls the diff-patch output format. Non
default number of digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.
-B Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create.
-M Detect renames.
-C Detect copies as well as renames. See also --find-copies-harder.
--diff-filter=[ACDMRTUXB*]
Select only files that are Added (A), Copied (C), Deleted (D),
Modified (M), Renamed (R), have their type (mode) changed (T),
are Unmerged (U), are Unknown (X), or have had their pairing
Broken (B). Any combination of the filter characters may be
used. When * (All-or-none) is added to the combination, all
paths are selected if there is any file that matches other
criteria in the comparison; if there is no file that matches
other criteria, nothing is selected.
--find-copies-harder
For performance reasons, by default, -C option finds copies only
if the original file of the copy was modified in the same
changeset. This flag makes the command inspect unmodified files
as candidates for the source of copy. This is a very expensive
operation for large projects, so use it with caution. Giving
more than one -C option has the same effect.
-l<num>
-M and -C options require O(n^2) processing time where n is the
number of potential rename/copy targets. This option prevents
rename/copy detection from running if the number of rename/copy
targets exceeds the specified number.
-S<string>
Look for differences that contain the change in <string>.
--pickaxe-all
When -S finds a change, show all the changes in that changeset,
not just the files that contain the change in <string>.
--pickaxe-regex
Make the <string> not a plain string but an extended POSIX regex
to match.
-O<orderfile>
Output the patch in the order specified in the <orderfile>,
which has one shell glob pattern per line.
-R Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or on-disk
file to tree contents.
--relative[=<path>]
When run from a subdirectory of the project, it can be told to
exclude changes outside the directory and show pathnames
relative to it with this option. When you are not in a
subdirectory (e.g. in a bare repository), you can name which
subdirectory to make the output relative to by giving a <path>
as an argument.
--text Treat all files as text.
-a Shorthand for "--text".
--ignore-space-at-eol
Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
--ignore-space-change
Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace
at line end, and considers all other sequences of one or more
whitespace characters to be equivalent.
-b Shorthand for "--ignore-space-change".
--ignore-all-space
Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences
even if one line has whitespace where the other line has none.
-w Shorthand for "--ignore-all-space".
--exit-code
Make the program exit with codes similar to diff(1). That is, it
exits with 1 if there were differences and 0 means no
differences.
--quiet
Disable all output of the program. Implies --exit-code.
--ext-diff
Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set an
external diff driver with gitattributes(5), you need to use this
option with git-log(1) and friends.
--no-ext-diff
Disallow external diff drivers.
--src-prefix=<prefix>
Show the given source prefix instead of "a/".
--dst-prefix=<prefix>
Show the given destination prefix instead of "b/".
--no-prefix
Do not show any source or destination prefix.
For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also
[1]diffcore documentation.
<tree-ish>
The id of a tree object.
<path>...
If provided, the results are limited to a subset of files
matching one of these prefix strings. i.e., file matches
/^<pattern1>|<pattern2>|.../ Note that this parameter does not
provide any wildcard or regexp features.
-r recurse into sub-trees
-t show tree entry itself as well as subtrees. Implies -r.
--root When --root is specified the initial commit will be showed as a
big creation event. This is equivalent to a diff against the
NULL tree.
--stdin
When --stdin is specified, the command does not take <tree-ish>
arguments from the command line. Instead, it reads either one
<commit> or a pair of <tree-ish> separated with a single space
from its standard input.
When a single commit is given on one line of such input, it
compares the commit with its parents. The following flags
further affects its behavior. This does not apply to the case
where two <tree-ish> separated with a single space are given.
-m By default, "git-diff-tree --stdin" does not show differences
for merge commits. With this flag, it shows differences to that
commit from all of its parents. See also -c.
-s By default, "git-diff-tree --stdin" shows differences, either in
machine-readable form (without -p) or in patch form (with -p).
This output can be suppressed. It is only useful with -v flag.
-v This flag causes "git-diff-tree --stdin" to also show the commit
message before the differences.
--pretty[=<format>]
Pretty-print the contents of the commit logs in a given format,
where <format> can be one of oneline, short, medium, full,
fuller, email, raw and format:<string>. When omitted, the format
defaults to medium.
Note: you can specify the default pretty format in the
repository configuration (see git-config(1)).
--abbrev-commit
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object
name, show only handful hexdigits prefix. Non default number of
digits can be specified with "--abbrev=<n>" (which also modifies
diff output, if it is displayed).
This should make "--pretty=oneline" a whole lot more readable
for people using 80-column terminals.
--encoding[=<encoding>]
The commit objects record the encoding used for the log message
in their encoding header; this option can be used to tell the
command to re-code the commit log message in the encoding
preferred by the user. For non plumbing commands this defaults
to UTF-8.
--no-commit-id
git-diff-tree outputs a line with the commit ID when applicable.
This flag suppressed the commit ID output.
-c This flag changes the way a merge commit is displayed (which
means it is useful only when the command is given one
<tree-ish>, or --stdin). It shows the differences from each of
the parents to the merge result simultaneously instead of
showing pairwise diff between a parent and the result one at a
time (which is what the -m option does). Furthermore, it lists
only files which were modified from all parents.
--cc This flag changes the way a merge commit patch is displayed, in
a similar way to the -c option. It implies the -c and -p options
and further compresses the patch output by omitting hunks that
show differences from only one parent, or show the same change
from all but one parent for an Octopus merge. When this
optimization makes all hunks disappear, the commit itself and
the commit log message is not shown, just like in any other
"empty diff" case.
--always
Show the commit itself and the commit log message even if the
diff itself is empty.
PRETTY FORMATS
If the commit is a merge, and if the pretty-format is not oneline,
email or raw, an additional line is inserted before the Author: line.
This line begins with "Merge: " and the sha1s of ancestral commits are
printed, separated by spaces. Note that the listed commits may not
necessarily be the list of the direct parent commits if you have
limited your view of history: for example, if you are only interested
in changes related to a certain directory or file.
Here are some additional details for each format:
· oneline
<sha1> <title line>
This is designed to be as compact as possible.
· short
commit <sha1>
Author: <author>
<title line>
· medium
commit <sha1>
Author: <author>
Date: <date>
<title line>
<full commit message>
· full
commit <sha1>
Author: <author>
Commit: <committer>
<title line>
<full commit message>
· fuller
commit <sha1>
Author: <author>
AuthorDate: <date & time>
Commit: <committer>
CommitDate: <date & time>
<title line>
<full commit message>
· email
From <sha1> <date>
From: <author>
Date: <date & time>
Subject: [PATCH] <title line>
<full commit message>
· raw
The raw format shows the entire commit exactly as stored in the
commit object. Notably, the SHA1s are displayed in full, regardless
of whether --abbrev or --no-abbrev are used, and parents information
show the true parent commits, without taking grafts nor history
simplification into account.
· format:
The format: format allows you to specify which information you want
to show. It works a little bit like printf format, with the notable
exception that you get a newline with %n instead of \n.
E.g, format:"The author of %h was %an, %ar%nThe title was >>%s<<%n"
would show something like this:
The author of fe6e0ee was Junio C Hamano, 23 hours ago
The title was >>t4119: test autocomputing -p<n> for traditional diff input.<<
The placeholders are:
· %H: commit hash
· %h: abbreviated commit hash
· %T: tree hash
· %t: abbreviated tree hash
· %P: parent hashes
· %p: abbreviated parent hashes
· %an: author name
· %ae: author email
· %ad: author date
· %aD: author date, RFC2822 style
· %ar: author date, relative
· %at: author date, UNIX timestamp
· %ai: author date, ISO 8601 format
· %cn: committer name
· %ce: committer email
· %cd: committer date
· %cD: committer date, RFC2822 style
· %cr: committer date, relative
· %ct: committer date, UNIX timestamp
· %ci: committer date, ISO 8601 format
· %e: encoding
· %s: subject
· %b: body
· %Cred: switch color to red
· %Cgreen: switch color to green
· %Cblue: switch color to blue
· %Creset: reset color
· %m: left, right or boundary mark
· %n: newline
LIMITING OUTPUT
If you're only interested in differences in a subset of files, for
example some architecture-specific files, you might do:
git-diff-tree-r <tree-ish> <tree-ish> arch/ia64 include/asm-ia64
and it will only show you what changed in those two directories.
Or if you are searching for what changed in just kernel/sched.c, just
do
git-diff-tree-r <tree-ish> <tree-ish> kernel/sched.c
and it will ignore all differences to other files.
The pattern is always the prefix, and is matched exactly. There are no
wildcards. Even stricter, it has to match a complete path component.
I.e. "foo" does not pick up foobar.h. "foo" does match foo/bar.h so it
can be used to name subdirectories.
An example of normal usage is:
torvalds@ppc970:~/git> git-diff-tree 5319e4......
*100664->100664 blob ac348b.......->a01513....... git-fsck-objects.c
which tells you that the last commit changed just one file (it's from
this one:
commit 3c6f7ca19ad4043e9e72fa94106f352897e651a8
tree 5319e4d609cdd282069cc4dce33c1db559539b03
parent b4e628ea30d5ab3606119d2ea5caeab141d38df7
author Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> Sat Apr 9 12:02:30 2005
committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> Sat Apr 9 12:02:30 2005
Make "git-fsck-objects" print out all the root commits it finds.
Once I do the reference tracking, I'll also make it print out all the
HEAD commits it finds, which is even more interesting.
in case you care).
OUTPUT FORMAT
The output format from "git-diff-index", "git-diff-tree",
"git-diff-files" and "git diff --raw" are very similar.
These commands all compare two sets of things; what is compared
differs:
git-diff-index <tree-ish>
compares the <tree-ish> and the files on the filesystem.
git-diff-index --cached <tree-ish>
compares the <tree-ish> and the index.
git-diff-tree [-r] <tree-ish-1> <tree-ish-2> [<pattern>...]
compares the trees named by the two arguments.
git-diff-files [<pattern>...]
compares the index and the files on the filesystem.
An output line is formatted this way:
in-place edit :100644 100644 bcd1234... 0123456... M file0
copy-edit :100644 100644 abcd123... 1234567... C68 file1 file2
rename-edit :100644 100644 abcd123... 1234567... R86 file1 file3
create :000000 100644 0000000... 1234567... A file4
delete :100644 000000 1234567... 0000000... D file5
unmerged :000000 000000 0000000... 0000000... U file6
That is, from the left to the right:
1. a colon.
2. mode for "src"; 000000 if creation or unmerged.
3. a space.
4. mode for "dst"; 000000 if deletion or unmerged.
5. a space.
6. sha1 for "src"; 0{40} if creation or unmerged.
7. a space.
8. sha1 for "dst"; 0{40} if creation, unmerged or "look at work tree".
9. a space.
10.
status, followed by optional "score" number.
11.
a tab or a NUL when -z option is used.
12.
path for "src"
13.
a tab or a NUL when -z option is used; only exists for C or R.
14.
path for "dst"; only exists for C or R.
15.
an LF or a NUL when -z option is used, to terminate the record.
<sha1> is shown as all 0's if a file is new on the filesystem and it
is out of sync with the index.
Example:
:100644 100644 5be4a4...... 000000...... M file.c
When -z option is not used, TAB, LF, and backslash characters in
pathnames are represented as \t, \n, and \\, respectively.
DIFF FORMAT FOR MERGES
"git-diff-tree", "git-diff-files" and "git-diff --raw" can take -c or
--cc option to generate diff output also for merge commits. The output
differs from the format described above in the following way:
1. there is a colon for each parent
2. there are more "src" modes and "src" sha1
3. status is concatenated status characters for each parent
4. no optional "score" number
5. single path, only for "dst"
Example:
::100644 100644 100644 fabadb8... cc95eb0... 4866510... MM describe.c
Note that combined diff lists only files which were modified from
all parents.
GENERATING PATCHES WITH -P
When "git-diff-index", "git-diff-tree", or "git-diff-files" are run
with a -p option, "git diff" without the --raw option, or "git log"
with the "-p" option, they do not produce the output described above;
instead they produce a patch file. You can customize the creation of
such patches via the GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF and the GIT_DIFF_OPTS
environment variables.
What the -p option produces is slightly different from the traditional
diff format.
1. It is preceded with a "git diff" header, that looks like this:
diff --git a/file1 b/file2
The a/ and b/ filenames are the same unless rename/copy is involved.
Especially, even for a creation or a deletion, /dev/null is not used
in place of a/ or b/ filenames.
When rename/copy is involved, file1 and file2 show the name of the
source file of the rename/copy and the name of the file that
rename/copy produces, respectively.
2. It is followed by one or more extended header lines:
old mode <mode>
new mode <mode>
deleted file mode <mode>
new file mode <mode>
copy from <path>
copy to <path>
rename from <path>
rename to <path>
similarity index <number>
dissimilarity index <number>
index <hash>..<hash> <mode>
3. TAB, LF, double quote and backslash characters in pathnames are
represented as \t, \n, \" and \\, respectively. If there is need for
such substitution then the whole pathname is put in double quotes.
The similarity index is the percentage of unchanged lines, and the
dissimilarity index is the percentage of changed lines. It is a
rounded down integer, followed by a percent sign. The similarity
index value of 100% is thus reserved for two equal files, while 100%
dissimilarity means that no line from the old file made it into the
new one.
COMBINED DIFF FORMAT
"git-diff-tree", "git-diff-files" and "git-diff" can take -c or --cc
option to produce combined diff. For showing a merge commit with "git
log -p", this is the default format. A combined diff format looks like
this:
diff --combined describe.c
index fabadb8,cc95eb0..4866510
--- a/describe.c
+++ b/describe.c
@@@ -98,20 -98,12 +98,20 @@@
return (a_date > b_date) ? -1 : (a_date == b_date) ? 0 : 1;
}
- static void describe(char *arg)
-static void describe(struct commit *cmit, int last_one)
++static void describe(char *arg, int last_one)
{
+ unsigned char sha1[20];
+ struct commit *cmit;
struct commit_list *list;
static int initialized = 0;
struct commit_name *n;
+ if (get_sha1(arg, sha1) < 0)
+ usage(describe_usage);
+ cmit = lookup_commit_reference(sha1);
+ if (!cmit)
+ usage(describe_usage);
+
if (!initialized) {
initialized = 1;
for_each_ref(get_name);
1. It is preceded with a "git diff" header, that looks like this (when
-c option is used):
diff --combined file
or like this (when --cc option is used):
diff --c file
2. It is followed by one or more extended header lines (this example
shows a merge with two parents):
index <hash>,<hash>..<hash>
mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode>
new file mode <mode>
deleted file mode <mode>,<mode>
The mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode> line appears only if at least one of
the <mode> is different from the rest. Extended headers with
information about detected contents movement (renames and copying
detection) are designed to work with diff of two <tree-ish> and are
not used by combined diff format.
3. It is followed by two-line from-file/to-file header
--- a/file
+++ b/file
Similar to two-line header for traditional unified diff format,
/dev/null is used to signal created or deleted files.
4. Chunk header format is modified to prevent people from accidentally
feeding it to patch -p1. Combined diff format was created for review
of merge commit changes, and was not meant for apply. The change is
similar to the change in the extended index header:
@@@ <from-file-range> <from-file-range> <to-file-range> @@@
There are (number of parents + 1) @ characters in the chunk header
for combined diff format.
Unlike the traditional unified diff format, which shows two files A
and B with a single column that has - (minus — appears in A but
removed in B), + (plus — missing in A but added to B), or " " (space
— unchanged) prefix, this format compares two or more files file1,
file2,... with one file X, and shows how X differs from each of
fileN. One column for each of fileN is prepended to the output line
to note how X's line is different from it.
A - character in the column N means that the line appears in fileN
but it does not appear in the result. A + character in the column N
means that the line appears in the last file, and fileN does not
have that line (in other words, the line was added, from the point
of view of that parent).
In the above example output, the function signature was changed from
both files (hence two - removals from both file1 and file2, plus +
to mean one line that was added does not appear in either file1 nor
file2). Also two other lines are the same from file1 but do not
appear in file2 (hence prefixed with ).
When shown by git diff-tree -c, it compares the parents of a merge
commit with the merge result (i.e. file1..fileN are the parents).
When shown by git diff-files -c, it compares the two unresolved
merge parents with the working tree file (i.e. file1 is stage 2 aka
"our version", file2 is stage 3 aka "their version").
OTHER DIFF FORMATS
The --summary option describes newly added, deleted, renamed and copied
files. The --stat option adds diffstat(1) graph to the output. These
options can be combined with other options, such as -p, and are meant
for human consumption.
When showing a change that involves a rename or a copy, --stat output
formats the pathnames compactly by combining common prefix and suffix
of the pathnames. For example, a change that moves arch/i386/Makefile
to arch/x86/Makefile while modifying 4 lines will be shown like this:
arch/{i386 => x86}/Makefile | 4 +--
The --numstat option gives the diffstat(1) information but is designed
for easier machine consumption. An entry in --numstat output looks like
this:
1 2 README
3 1 arch/{i386 => x86}/Makefile
That is, from left to right:
1. the number of added lines;
2. a tab;
3. the number of deleted lines;
4. a tab;
5. pathname (possibly with rename/copy information);
6. a newline.
When -z output option is in effect, the output is formatted this
way:
1 2 README NUL
3 1 NUL arch/i386/Makefile NUL arch/x86/Makefile NUL
That is:
1. the number of added lines;
2. a tab;
3. the number of deleted lines;
4. a tab;
5. a NUL (only exists if renamed/copied);
6. pathname in preimage;
7. a NUL (only exists if renamed/copied);
8. pathname in postimage (only exists if renamed/copied);
9. a NUL.
The extra NUL before the preimage path in renamed case is to allow
scripts that read the output to tell if the current record being
read is a single-path record or a rename/copy record without reading
ahead. After reading added and deleted lines, reading up to NUL
would yield the pathname, but if that is NUL, the record will show
two paths.
AUTHOR
Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
DOCUMENTATION
Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list
<git@vger.kernel.org>.
GIT
Part of the git(7) suite
REFERENCES
1. diffcore documentation
diffcore.html
Git 1.5.5.2 10/21/2008 GIT-DIFF-TREE(1)
