
In some cases, you may be interested in knowing the commit differences between two branches. $ git diff branch1.branch2 Compare commits between two branches This is particularly true whenever you are checking out a new branch from the master branch : other commits might be integrated to master while you are working on your feature.Īs a consequence, in order to compare two branches, you almost always want to stick with the first method we described. However, developing on your own branch does not prevent the branch you checked out from to have other commits. When you are developing a new feature, you are most of the time doing it on your own branch. Most of the time, you want to stick with the first method, meaning using only two dots in order to compare two branches.

So which method should you use in order to compare two branches? Using “git diff” with three dots compares the top of the right branch (the HEAD) with the common ancestor of the two branches.Īs always, a diagram speaks a hundred words, so here is the description of the diff command with three dots. So what’s the difference with the previous command? In order to compare two branches, you can also use the “git diff” command and provide the branch names separated by three dots. Comparing two branches using triple dot syntax Git is using a color code in order to display differences done between two branches : lines in green are lines added to the files and lines in red are the ones that are deleted from the files. $ git diff master.featureĪs you can see, one file has been added to the branch. In order to see what has been modified between master and feature, you would run the following command. Let’s say for example that you are looking to see the differences between a feature branch (being one commit ahead of master) and the master branch. Git is the most widely used version control system in the world today and is considered the modern standard for software development.In short, it will show you all the commits that “branch2” has that are not in “branch1”.

Pull requests are one such popular tool that allows teams to collaborate on Git branches and efficiently review each other's code. Git also has excellent support for branching, merging, and rewriting repository history, which has led to many innovative and powerful workflows and tools.

This makes the initial clone of the repository slower, but subsequent operations such as commit, blame, diff, merge, and log dramatically faster. Unlike older centralized version control systems such as SVN and CVS, Git is distributed: every developer has the full history of their code repository locally. Git is a free and open-source version control system, originally created by Linus Torvalds in 2005.
