Git diff of commits introduced in a branch

Question

I have different old branches I want to delete but I want to see the commits/diff I originally introduced in the branch at that time.

I don't want the diff between "master" and "branch" but all the unified commits introduced in that branch as a single diff.

Is it possible?

Answer 1

If you need the diff or list of commits "from" a branch which is already merged into your master , like this

A---B---F---G---H---I---J <<< master <<< HEAD
     \         /
      C---D---E <<< branch-a

Here, H is the merge commit, and B the commit branch-a branched from.

If you do

git diff master branch-a

as you noted, you won't get the diff for the list of commits on branch-a , but the for accumulated changes that happened since the merge commit, which is entirely different.

So you'd have to diff between the tip of branch-a ( E ) and the merge-base between the two branches ( B ) :

git diff `git merge-base branch-a master` branch-a

...which, as usefully noted by jthill below , can be a bit less verbose with the special three-dots syntax , to the same effect :

git diff master...branch-a

And of course you can add here any options you need to display code diffs or file lists, in the format you want. Maybe tell us more in case of a specific format.

But alternatively you could also want to get the list of commits, and it wouldn't be much more difficult to extract, you could do

git log `git merge-base branch-a master`..branch-a

(mind the two dots to make it a range, not to be confused with above three-dots)

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Also, for any remaining doubts, check the very useful doc on revisions.