How can I see the changes in a Git commit?

Question

When I do git diff COMMIT I see the changes between that commit and HEAD (as far as I know), but I would like to see the changes that were made by that single commit.

I haven't found any obvious options on diff / log that will give me that output.

possible duplicate of [Shorthand for diff of git commit with its parent?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/436362/shorthand-for-diff-of-git-commit-with-its-parent) — Chris Maes, Mar 10 '15 at 15:54

score 2519 · Accepted Answer · edited May 16 '21 at 12:22

2519

To see the diff for a particular COMMIT hash, where COMMIT is the hash of the commit:

git diff COMMIT~ COMMIT will show you the difference between that COMMIT's ancestor and the COMMIT. See the man pages for git diff for details about the command and gitrevisions about the ~ notation and its friends.

Alternatively, git show COMMIT will do something very similar. (The commit's data, including its diff - but not for merge commits.) See the git show manpage.

(also git diff COMMIT will show you the difference between that COMMIT and the head.)

edited May 16 '21 at 12:22

yaya

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answered Jul 10 '13 at 06:23

Nevik Rehnel

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Note that the `^` needs to be quoted in the Thomson and Bourne shells (synonym for `|` there) and `rc` and its derivatives (caret operator) and in `zsh` with extendedglob enabled (`not` globbing operator) – Stephane Chazelas Mar 24 '14 at 14:34
1

This doesnt work anymore. git diff HEAD^ HEAD doesn't show anything. – user3690202 Jun 07 '15 at 17:16
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@user3690202, yes it does. If the diff doesn't show anything, it means the diff is empty (there's no difference between `HEAD^` and `HEAD`). This can especially be the case when you do things like ignoring whitespace, or if you simply have to identical commits. – Nevik Rehnel Jun 09 '15 at 11:32
There was definitely a non-whitespace commit there - I know because I just committed it literally 5 minutes before trying to view what I committed. There must be some other situations where this doesn't work. – user3690202 Jun 09 '15 at 19:07
@user3690202, if that continues to be a problem (or just interests you), you should open a new question describing your situation in detail and trying to reproduce it ;) – Nevik Rehnel Jun 10 '15 at 06:35
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Note that `HEAD^` implies first parent in case a commit has multiple parents (ie merge commit). – Mansour Nov 15 '15 at 21:19
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`git diff COMMIT~ COMMIT` works for me, notice the tilde instead of caret. I'm running git version 2.6.1.windows.1 on Windows 10. – Juuso Ohtonen Nov 24 '15 at 10:58
"git show COMMIT" didn't work for me, but "git show $COMMIT" did. I think this is a typo in the answer? – tradetree May 01 '16 at 20:11
17

@tradetree: the word COMMIT is supposed to be replaced with the name of some commit, e.g. the SHA sum. – Nick Matteo May 12 '16 at 19:00
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I feel like git show is more appropriate for this question and should be the suggestion mentioned first. – pypmannetjies Oct 12 '16 at 12:00
3

If using bash, `COMMIT^ COMMIT` can be abbreviated as `COMMIT{^,}`. – Lauri Nurmi Jan 12 '17 at 10:34
@JuusoOhtonen In theory a single `^` would do the same thing as a single `~`, but I believe you need to put quotes around the `^` as Stephane suggested. That's what I found to be the case when running git from the Windows command prompt. – Tim Goodman Jan 19 '17 at 19:31
You can also extend this command with file specification (for example to exclude fixture files): `git diff COMMITID^ COMMITID *.yml` – Franziska Mar 07 '17 at 10:14
1

This answer contains too much obscuring information (long introduction about `git diff` which already known by author) – Daniel Garmoshka May 01 '17 at 10:29
There should be command `git diff COMMIT^` (literal). Nobody cares what the most recent commit hash is. – Jari Turkia Jun 02 '21 at 09:32
Note that there is no way to show only diff by `git show`. If you want to output only diff, use `git diff`. – Weihang Jian Nov 10 '21 at 02:14
I'm trying to run these commands on a GitHub action that uses Ubuntu, and it doesn't like `git diff $GITHUB_SHA^ $GITHUB_SHA`. It gives the error: `fatal: ambiguous argument '^': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.` I've also tried with the ~. Any ideas on how to get this to work in a Github action workflow? – transposeglobal Feb 09 '22 at 00:10

score 612 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 07 '21 at 23:20

As mentioned in "Shorthand for diff of git commit with its parent?", you can also use git diff with:

git diff COMMIT^!

or

git diff-tree -p COMMIT

With git show, you would need (in order to focus on diff alone) to do:

git show --color --pretty=format:%b COMMIT

The COMMIT parameter is a commit-ish:

A commit object or an object that can be recursively dereferenced to a commit object. The following are all commit-ishes: a commit object, a tag object that points to a commit object, a tag object that points to a tag object that points to a commit object, etc.

See gitrevision "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" to reference a commit-ish.
See also "What does tree-ish mean in Git?".

score 500 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 02 '17 at 23:07

500

You can also try this easy way:

git show <COMMIT>

edited Jul 02 '17 at 23:07

Reggie Pinkham

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answered Jun 15 '16 at 09:02

Lakhan

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It seems this does something quite different – Miserable Variable Jun 20 '18 at 18:01
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It only shows the commit message. Not the diff of the code changes applied for this commit. – k0pernikus Sep 10 '19 at 17:06
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This should be the answer. – Roel Apr 16 '20 at 16:45
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@k0pernikus it does for me – JobHunter69 Sep 09 '20 at 23:40
Sometimes, this command shows the commit message. – alfredo Mar 14 '22 at 00:48

score 107 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 11 '21 at 09:23

107

git show shows the changes made in the most recent commit. It is equivalent to git show HEAD.

git show HEAD~1 takes you back one commit.

edited Apr 11 '21 at 09:23

Peter Mortensen

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answered Sep 16 '16 at 01:50

Adam Salma

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score 63 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 03 '19 at 11:53

63

I usually do:

git diff HEAD~1

To show the changes regarding the last commit. If you have more commits just increase the number 1 to how many commits diff you want to see.

answered Apr 03 '19 at 11:53

Alex

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To show the changes of the last commit, simply use `git show` ;) – xeruf Mar 25 '21 at 16:02

Iwnnay · Answer 6 · 2021-04-13T23:18:01.210

55

Use:

git show <commit_sha>

This will show you just what's in that commit. You can do a range by just putting a space between the two commit SHA-1 hashes.

git show <beginning_sha> <ending_sha>

which is pretty helpful if you're rebasing often because your feature logs will all be in a row.

If you happen to want to look at the last 3 commits you can use the HEAD syntax

git show HEAD~3 HEAD

edited Apr 13 '21 at 23:18

answered Aug 22 '18 at 14:46

Iwnnay

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Is a SHA-1 hash the only possibility (not a rhetorical question)? What about, e.g., `HEAD~3`? – Peter Mortensen Apr 11 '21 at 09:37
Yes, you could use something like `git show HEAD~3 HEAD` It's a little clunkier than other git commands, but it works. – Iwnnay Apr 13 '21 at 23:13

score 40 · Answer 7 · edited Jul 19 '18 at 20:34

40

First get the commit ID using,

git log #to list all

Or

git log -p -1 #last one commit id

Copy commit id.

Now we use two methods to list changes from a specific commit,

Method 1:

git diff commit_id^! #commit id something like this 1c6a6000asad012

Method 2:

git show commit_id
For example: git show 1c6a600a

edited Jul 19 '18 at 20:34

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jul 19 '17 at 05:48

Mohideen bin Mohammed

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What does the `^!` mean?? – Martín Coll Dec 20 '17 at 18:31
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^! is the shorthand for commit^..commit which means will exclude all parents and check diff in that commit – Mohideen bin Mohammed Dec 21 '17 at 07:27
I'm not an expert but I have a case (with multiple branches being involved) where git log c^! is not exactly the same as git log c^..c. In fact it's much better: git log c^..c listed too many entries while git log c^! did the right thing, so this is what I was looking for for a long time – user829755 Apr 03 '18 at 09:16

score 30 · Answer 8 · 2014-06-26T16:00:58.867

30

From the man page for git-diff(1):

git diff [options] [<commit>] [--] [<path>…]
git diff [options] --cached [<commit>] [--] [<path>…]
git diff [options] <commit> <commit> [--] [<path>…]
git diff [options] <blob> <blob>
git diff [options] [--no-index] [--] <path> <path>

Use the 3rd one in the middle:

git diff [options] <parent-commit> <commit>

Also from the same man page, at the bottom, in the Examples section:

$ git diff HEAD^ HEAD      <3>

Compare the version before the last commit and the last commit.

Admittedly it's worded a little confusingly, it would be less confusing as

Compare the most recent commit with the commit before it.

edited Jun 26 '14 at 16:00

answered Jul 10 '13 at 07:20

3

Your rewording would apply to `git diff HEAD HEAD^`. – Richard Jun 26 '14 at 15:56
git diff HEAD^ HEAD doesn't display any changes. – user3690202 Jun 07 '15 at 17:16
@user3690202 so that implies that there aren't any changes to display. Is that actually the case? – Jun 08 '15 at 02:39
How can there not be any changes to display? If you want to view the last commit, surely unless it is a completely new repository there will be some changes to display? – user3690202 Jun 09 '15 at 19:06
@user3690202 it's possible to make an "empty commit" with Git that doesn't actually contain any changes from the parent, although there is a built-in safeguard that checks for and prevents this, though it is overridable with a command line option. I doubt that you would intentionally create an empty commit, so another possibility is that you somehow have pre-commit line-ending conversion on (or other funny whitespace stuff) that is tricking Git into thinking that no changes have actually been made. What platform are you running Git on? – Jun 10 '15 at 00:21
@user3690202 use "": `git diff "HEAD^" HEAD`, worked for me – MartenBE Nov 06 '15 at 14:41

score 24 · Answer 9 · edited Jul 19 '18 at 20:30

24

The following seems to do the job; I use it to show what has been brought in by a merge.

git whatchanged -m -n 1 -p <SHA-1 hash of merge commit>

edited Jul 19 '18 at 20:30

Peter Mortensen

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answered Oct 14 '14 at 17:16

MichaelMoser

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Would that work too with `git log`? (because of http://stackoverflow.com/a/18585297/6309) – VonC Oct 14 '14 at 17:52
git log --name-only - for listing the changed files. Or git log --name-status --find-renames - to get the list of changed files with the kind of change (added/modified/renamed, etc) – MichaelMoser Jan 29 '21 at 01:31

score 23 · Answer 10 · edited Dec 29 '19 at 06:23

23

Another possibility:

git log -p COMMIT -1

edited Dec 29 '19 at 06:23

frogatto

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answered Feb 16 '16 at 14:49

John_West

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score 22 · Answer 11 · answered Jul 21 '21 at 17:48

22

For me this works just fine

git show COMMIT --compact-summary

Which shows the next information

Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as file creations or deletions ("new" or "gone", optionally "+l" if it’s a symlink) and mode changes ("+x" or "-x" for adding or removing executable bit respectively) in diffstat. The information is put between the filename part and the graph part. Implies --stat.

answered Jul 21 '21 at 17:48

José Alvarez

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Upvoted because this was actually what I was looking for. I stumbled onto this question because "see changes in commit" can mean a few different things. I wanted to see the files that changed, not actually what changed in them. Keep reading for very good answers to seeing _what changed in the file_. – Andrew Falanga Dec 29 '21 at 21:04
1

Great answer. Like the output format of this command. – Binita Bharati Apr 29 '22 at 07:58

score 15 · Answer 12 · edited Jul 19 '18 at 20:34

15

I like the below command to compare a specific commit and its last commit:

git diff <commit-hash>^-

Example:

git diff cd1b3f485^-

edited Jul 19 '18 at 20:34

Peter Mortensen

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answered Apr 10 '18 at 10:11

starcwl

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Irshu · Answer 13 · 2018-09-27T02:52:59.593

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You could use git diff HEAD HEAD^1 to see the diff with the parent commit.

If you only want to see the list of files, add the --stat option.

edited Sep 27 '18 at 02:52

answered Dec 08 '15 at 04:17

Irshu

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This is what you mean, git diff HEAD^1 HEAD – Shibir Basak Sep 26 '18 at 11:34
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Note that this will show what you added as removed, as it will do a reverse comparison. The way you should read the `diff` command is: what would I need to change in the file to get from commit `HEAD` to commit `HEAD^1`? – brainplot Jan 25 '19 at 00:34

score 10 · Answer 14 · edited Apr 11 '21 at 09:21

10

git difftool COMMIT^ <commit hash>

is also possible if you have configured your difftool.

See here how to configure difftool. Or the manual page here.

Additionally, you can use git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r <commit hash> to see which files been changed/committed in a give commit hash.

edited Apr 11 '21 at 09:21

Peter Mortensen

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answered Mar 24 '14 at 12:49

Chand Priyankara

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score 10 · Answer 15 · edited Apr 11 '21 at 09:22

10

To see author and time by commit, use git show COMMIT. Which will result in something like this:

commit 13414df70354678b1b9304ebe4b6d204810f867e
Merge: a2a2894 3a1ba8f
Author: You <you@you.com>
Date:   Fri Jul 24 17:46:42 2015 -0700

     Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/your-feature'

If you want to see which files had been changed, run the following with the values from the Merge line above, git diff --stat a2a2894 3a1ba8f.

If you want to see the actual diff, run git --stat a2a2894 3a1ba8f.

edited Apr 11 '21 at 09:22

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jul 27 '15 at 22:20

Nikita R.

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"If you want to see the actual diff, run `git --stat a2a2894 3a1ba8f`". I think you mean `git diff a2a2894 3a1ba8f` or else `unknown option: --stat`. – 林果皞 Nov 21 '18 at 08:56
`git show COMMIT` already shows the changeset for normal commits. It only won't show it for merges. – Mecki Mar 26 '21 at 10:51

score 8 · Answer 16 · answered Jan 29 '19 at 19:41

For checking complete changes:

  git diff <commit_Id_1> <commit_Id_2>

For checking only the changed/added/deleted files:

  git diff <commit_Id_1> <commit_Id_2> --name-only

NOTE: For checking diff without commit in between, you don't need to put the commit ids.

score 8 · Answer 17 · answered Jan 08 '20 at 12:37

8

If you just want to see the changes in the latest commit, simply git show will give you that.

answered Jan 08 '20 at 12:37

MyrionSC2

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Not works. Only show the commit message – alfredo Mar 14 '22 at 00:54

score 8 · Answer 18 · answered Oct 23 '20 at 04:29

8

The following code will show the current commit

git show HEAD

answered Oct 23 '20 at 04:29

jinson

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score 4 · Answer 19 · edited Jul 19 '18 at 20:32

This command will get you the Git parent commit-hash:

git log -n 2 <commit-hash>

After that git diff-tool <commit-hash> <parent-commit-hash>

Example:

bonnie@bonnie ~/ $ git log -n 2 7f65b9a9d3820525766fcba285b3c678e889fe3

commit 7f65b9a9d3820525766fcba285b3c678e889fe3b
Author: souparno <souparno.majumder@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon Jul 25 13:17:07 2016 +0530

CSS changed to maintain the aspect ratio of the channel logos and to fit them properly.

commit c3a61f17e14e2b80cf64b172a45f1b4826ee291f
Author: souparno <souparno.majumder@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon Jul 25 11:28:09 2016 +0530

The ratio of the height to width of the channel images are maintained.

After this

git difftool 7f65b9a9d3820525766fcba285b3c678e889fe3b c3a61f17e14e2b80cf64b172a45f1b4826ee291f

score 4 · Answer 20 · edited Jul 19 '18 at 20:33

4

I'm running Git version 2.6.1.windows.1 on Windows 10, so I needed a slight modification to Nevik's answer (tilde instead of caret):

git diff COMMIT~ COMMIT

Another option is to quote the caret:

git diff "COMMIT^" COMMIT

edited Jul 19 '18 at 20:33

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jan 20 '17 at 08:00

Juuso Ohtonen

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score 3 · Answer 21 · answered Dec 22 '20 at 19:45

3

It is also possible to review changes between two commits for a specific file.

git diff <commit_Id_1> <commit_Id_2> some_dir/file.txt

answered Dec 22 '20 at 19:45

Sergey Miletskiy

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`git diff on/specific/file.txt` – CallMarl Feb 12 '21 at 10:25

score 3 · Answer 22 · answered Feb 17 '22 at 07:12

A few answers miss a special case. How to view changes made by the Root Commit as it does not have a parent/ancestor.

Both

git diff <root_commit>^..<root_commit>

and

git diff <root_commit>~..<root_commit>

throw an error.

$git diff 27e521ca73a46b2d3a28568dc49fced81e46aaea~ 27e521ca73a46b2d3a28568dc49fced81e46aaea
fatal: ambiguous argument '27e521ca73a46b2d3a28568dc49fced81e46aaea~': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
Use '--' to separate paths from revisions, like this:
'git <command> [<revision>...] -- [<file>...]'

git diff <root_commit>^!

shows diff btw root commit and HEAD. Like so:

$ git diff 27e521ca73a46b2d3a28568dc49fced81e46aaea^!
diff --git a/file1.txt b/file1.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..80f3f1a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/file1.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+Create the first file.
+
+Add some placeholder text to first file.
+
+
diff --git a/file2.txt b/file2.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..66e494f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/file2.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+This is the second file.
+
+It has an uncommited commit.
+
+We use it to demo default `git diff` behaviour.
+

(These are changes made by all commits btw my root commit and HEAD).

For Root Commit

I find only

git show --color --pretty=format:%b <root_commit_hash>

works.

Like so:

$ git show --color --pretty=format:%b 27e521ca73a46b2d3a28568dc49fced81e46aaea

diff --git a/README b/README
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..12a04f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+# git-diff-demo
+
+This repo documents the demo of the git diff command.
+We will have options, and use cases.

(My root commit added only the README)

score 1 · Answer 23 · edited Apr 11 '21 at 09:25

1

In case of checking the source change in a graphical view, use:

gitk (your commit id goes here)

For example:

gitk HEAD~1

edited Apr 11 '21 at 09:25

Peter Mortensen

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answered May 11 '18 at 08:02

vijayakannan

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I don't understand why this answer was downvoted. I agree that command line and text based stuff is the way to go but gitk gives a lot of useful information. – ShellFish Sep 25 '19 at 13:12
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`gitk` is not `git` it's spécifique package and it doesn't exist on every OS where `git` could be installed.`tig` is also good tools as many others. – CallMarl Feb 12 '21 at 10:32

score 0 · Answer 24 · answered Apr 08 '22 at 09:49

0

git difftool "HASH_in_history" -- "path_to_file"

answered Apr 08 '22 at 09:49

Sergey

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How can I see the changes in a Git commit?

24 Answers24

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