Git显示分支中所有未合并更改的差异

Question

I want to delete some old branches that I have locally, but not before I make sure that the changes in those branches are not changes I want to keep.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that a good way to do that would be to check if it contains anything that has not been added to the master branch yet. So I'd like to display those changes.

Note that I don't want to merely do

git diff master..old_branch

because I would get a lot of noise, consisting of all the changes that were added to master since then.

I also don't think I want

git diff master...old_branch

because, from what I undersand, it just displays the commits that were added to old_branch after it derived from master, but does not check if those commits were added (cherry-picked, for instance) to master later on.

How do I do that ?

edit: Let me try to rephrase my question, since there seems to be some confusion. I don't just want to see commit differences, but rather all lines that have been added by old_branch since it was created from master, but without displaying those that have since been added on the master branch.

So for example:

• master initially contains 'abc'
• old_branch is created from master
• old_branch changes the contents to 'abcdef' (added d,e,f)
• Meanwhile master changes the contents to 'abcdg' (added d,g)

In this case I would want to show the 'ef', since 'def' was added by old_branch, but 'd' was also added in the master branch, and 'g' has been added only by the master branch, so the changes that are in old_branch and not merged in master is 'ef'.

edit2: To put it in yet another perspective:

Let's name D the commit where master and old_branch diverged (ie their common root, or ie where the old_branch was created)

Then I want diff(old_branch, D) - diff(master, D)

which means that I want all differences between old_branch and D , but I want to disgard all changes that differ from old_branch to D if they also differ from master to D .

Thanks

Answer 1

If you want to see any changes in branch old_branch that are not currently in master your first command is almost correct:

git diff old_branch..master

Note the two dots vs. three. Also note old_branch comes first in the statement. If you reverse the order, you'll get a reverse diff of changes in master not in old_branch .