Perform comparisons (diff)

Comparison commands follow this pattern:

git diff <before-ref> <after-ref>

…to enable you to visualize the difference between <before-ref> and <after-ref>. These are some common comparisons you might want to do.

How to see the changes on your branch

Compare your branch to its parent:

git diff <branched-from> <my-branch>

e.g.

git diff main TKT-23-fix-rendering-issue

…to compare a bugfix branch to the main branch.

If you have two release tags v1.2.3 and v1.2.4, you can compare them:

git diff v1.2.3 v1.2.4

If you have edited foo.txt but haven’t added or commited your changes, you can:

git diff -- foo.txt

If you have added/staged some changes to foo.txt you can see them with:

git diff --cached -- foo.txt

Simply omit the filename(s) from these commands to see all changed files, e.g.:

git diff --cached