The options below can be used to change the way git show
generates diff output.
-p, -u, --patch
Generate patch (see section on generating patches).
-s, --no-patch
Suppress diff output. Useful for commands like git show that
show the patch by default, or to cancel the effect of
--patch.
--diff-merges=(off|none|on|first-parent|1|separate|m|combined|c|dense-combined|cc),
--no-diff-merges
Specify diff format to be used for merge commits. Default is
dense-combined unless --first-parent is in use, in which case
first-parent is the default.
--diff-merges=(off|none), --no-diff-merges
Disable output of diffs for merge commits. Useful to
override implied value.
--diff-merges=on, --diff-merges=m, -m
This option makes diff output for merge commits to be
shown in the default format. -m will produce the output
only if -p is given as well. The default format could be
changed using log.diffMerges configuration parameter,
which default value is separate.
--diff-merges=first-parent, --diff-merges=1
This option makes merge commits show the full diff with
respect to the first parent only.
--diff-merges=separate
This makes merge commits show the full diff with respect
to each of the parents. Separate log entry and diff is
generated for each parent.
--diff-merges=combined, --diff-merges=c, -c
With this option, diff output for a merge commit shows
the differences from each of the parents to the merge
result simultaneously instead of showing pairwise diff
between a parent and the result one at a time.
Furthermore, it lists only files which were modified from
all parents. -c implies -p.
--diff-merges=dense-combined, --diff-merges=cc, --cc
With this option the output produced by
--diff-merges=combined is further compressed by omitting
uninteresting hunks whose contents in the parents have
only two variants and the merge result picks one of them
without modification. --cc implies -p.
--combined-all-paths
This flag causes combined diffs (used for merge commits) to
list the name of the file from all parents. It thus only has
effect when --diff-merges=[dense-]combined is in use, and is
likely only useful if filename changes are detected (i.e.
when either rename or copy detection have been requested).
-U<n>, --unified=<n>
Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of the usual
three. Implies --patch.
--output=<file>
Output to a specific file instead of stdout.
--output-indicator-new=<char>, --output-indicator-old=<char>,
--output-indicator-context=<char>
Specify the character used to indicate new, old or context
lines in the generated patch. Normally they are +, - and ' '
respectively.
--raw
For each commit, show a summary of changes using the raw diff
format. See the "RAW OUTPUT FORMAT" section of git-diff(1).
This is different from showing the log itself in raw format,
which you can achieve with --format=raw.
--patch-with-raw
Synonym for -p --raw.
-t
Show the tree objects in the diff output.
--indent-heuristic
Enable the heuristic that shifts diff hunk boundaries to make
patches easier to read. This is the default.
--no-indent-heuristic
Disable the indent heuristic.
--minimal
Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is
produced.
--patience
Generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.
--histogram
Generate a diff using the "histogram diff" algorithm.
--anchored=<text>
Generate a diff using the "anchored diff" algorithm.
This option may be specified more than once.
If a line exists in both the source and destination, exists
only once, and starts with this text, this algorithm attempts
to prevent it from appearing as a deletion or addition in the
output. It uses the "patience diff" algorithm internally.
--diff-algorithm={patience|minimal|histogram|myers}
Choose a diff algorithm. The variants are as follows:
default, myers
The basic greedy diff algorithm. Currently, this is the
default.
minimal
Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff
is produced.
patience
Use "patience diff" algorithm when generating patches.
histogram
This algorithm extends the patience algorithm to "support
low-occurrence common elements".
For instance, if you configured the diff.algorithm variable
to a non-default value and want to use the default one, then
you have to use --diff-algorithm=default option.
--stat[=<width>[,<name-width>[,<count>]]]
Generate a diffstat. By default, as much space as necessary
will be used for the filename part, and the rest for the
graph part. Maximum width defaults to terminal width, or 80
columns if not connected to a terminal, and can be overridden
by <width>. The width of the filename part can be limited by
giving another width <name-width> after a comma. The width of
the graph part can be limited by using
--stat-graph-width=<width> (affects all commands generating a
stat graph) or by setting diff.statGraphWidth=<width> (does
not affect git format-patch). By giving a third parameter
<count>, you can limit the output to the first <count> lines,
followed by ... if there are more.
These parameters can also be set individually with
--stat-width=<width>, --stat-name-width=<name-width> and
--stat-count=<count>.
--compact-summary
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.
--numstat
Similar to --stat, but shows number of added and deleted
lines in decimal notation and pathname without abbreviation,
to make it more machine friendly. For binary files, outputs
two - instead of saying 0 0.
--shortstat
Output only the last line of the --stat format containing
total number of modified files, as well as number of added
and deleted lines.
-X[<param1,param2,...>], --dirstat[=<param1,param2,...>]
Output the distribution of relative amount of changes for
each sub-directory. The behavior of --dirstat can be
customized by passing it a comma separated list of
parameters. The defaults are controlled by the diff.dirstat
configuration variable (see git-config(1)). The following
parameters are available:
changes
Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that
have been removed from the source, or added to the
destination. This ignores the amount of pure code
movements within a file. In other words, rearranging
lines in a file is not counted as much as other changes.
This is the default behavior when no parameter is given.
lines
Compute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular
line-based diff analysis, and summing the removed/added
line counts. (For binary files, count 64-byte chunks
instead, since binary files have no natural concept of
lines). This is a more expensive --dirstat behavior than
the changes behavior, but it does count rearranged lines
within a file as much as other changes. The resulting
output is consistent with what you get from the other
--*stat options.
files
Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of
files changed. Each changed file counts equally in the
dirstat analysis. This is the computationally cheapest
--dirstat behavior, since it does not have to look at the
file contents at all.
cumulative
Count changes in a child directory for the parent
directory as well. Note that when using cumulative, the
sum of the percentages reported may exceed 100%. The
default (non-cumulative) behavior can be specified with
the noncumulative parameter.
<limit>
An integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by
default). Directories contributing less than this
percentage of the changes are not shown in the output.
Example: The following will count changed files, while
ignoring directories with less than 10% of the total amount
of changed files, and accumulating child directory counts in
the parent directories: --dirstat=files,10,cumulative.
--cumulative
Synonym for --dirstat=cumulative
--dirstat-by-file[=<param1,param2>...]
Synonym for --dirstat=files,param1,param2...
--summary
Output a condensed summary of extended header information
such as creations, renames and mode changes.
--patch-with-stat
Synonym for -p --stat.
-z
Separate the commits with NULs instead of with new newlines.
Also, when --raw or --numstat has been given, do not munge
pathnames and use NULs as output field terminators.
Without this option, pathnames with "unusual" characters are
quoted as explained for the configuration variable
core.quotePath (see git-config(1)).
--name-only
Show only names of changed files. The file names are often
encoded in UTF-8. For more information see the discussion
about encoding in the git-log(1) manual page.
--name-status
Show only names and status of changed files. See the
description of the --diff-filter option on what the status
letters mean. Just like --name-only the file names are often
encoded in UTF-8.
--submodule[=<format>]
Specify how differences in submodules are shown. When
specifying --submodule=short the short format is used. This
format just shows the names of the commits at the beginning
and end of the range. When --submodule or --submodule=log is
specified, the log format is used. This format lists the
commits in the range like git-submodule(1) summary does. When
--submodule=diff is specified, the diff format is used. This
format shows an inline diff of the changes in the submodule
contents between the commit range. Defaults to diff.submodule
or the short format if the config option is unset.
--color[=<when>]
Show colored diff. --color (i.e. without =<when>) is the
same as --color=always. <when> can be one of always, never,
or auto.
--no-color
Turn off colored diff. It is the same as --color=never.
--color-moved[=<mode>]
Moved lines of code are colored differently. The <mode>
defaults to no if the option is not given and to zebra if the
option with no mode is given. The mode must be one of:
no
Moved lines are not highlighted.
default
Is a synonym for zebra. This may change to a more
sensible mode in the future.
plain
Any line that is added in one location and was removed in
another location will be colored with
color.diff.newMoved. Similarly color.diff.oldMoved will
be used for removed lines that are added somewhere else
in the diff. This mode picks up any moved line, but it is
not very useful in a review to determine if a block of
code was moved without permutation.
blocks
Blocks of moved text of at least 20 alphanumeric
characters are detected greedily. The detected blocks are
painted using either the color.diff.{old,new}Moved color.
Adjacent blocks cannot be told apart.
zebra
Blocks of moved text are detected as in blocks mode. The
blocks are painted using either the
color.diff.{old,new}Moved color or
color.diff.{old,new}MovedAlternative. The change between
the two colors indicates that a new block was detected.
dimmed-zebra
Similar to zebra, but additional dimming of uninteresting
parts of moved code is performed. The bordering lines of
two adjacent blocks are considered interesting, the rest
is uninteresting. dimmed_zebra is a deprecated synonym.
--no-color-moved
Turn off move detection. This can be used to override
configuration settings. It is the same as --color-moved=no.
--color-moved-ws=<modes>
This configures how whitespace is ignored when performing the
move detection for --color-moved. These modes can be given as
a comma separated list:
no
Do not ignore whitespace when performing move detection.
ignore-space-at-eol
Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
ignore-space-change
Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores
whitespace at line end, and considers all other sequences
of one or more whitespace characters to be equivalent.
ignore-all-space
Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores
differences even if one line has whitespace where the
other line has none.
allow-indentation-change
Initially ignore any whitespace in the move detection,
then group the moved code blocks only into a block if the
change in whitespace is the same per line. This is
incompatible with the other modes.
--no-color-moved-ws
Do not ignore whitespace when performing move detection. This
can be used to override configuration settings. It is the
same as --color-moved-ws=no.
--word-diff[=<mode>]
Show a word diff, using the <mode> to delimit changed words.
By default, words are delimited by whitespace; see
--word-diff-regex below. The <mode> defaults to plain, and
must be one of:
color
Highlight changed words using only colors. Implies
--color.
plain
Show words as [-removed-] and {+added+}. Makes no
attempts to escape the delimiters if they appear in the
input, so the output may be ambiguous.
porcelain
Use a special line-based format intended for script
consumption. Added/removed/unchanged runs are printed in
the usual unified diff format, starting with a +/-/` `
character at the beginning of the line and extending to
the end of the line. Newlines in the input are
represented by a tilde ~ on a line of its own.
none
Disable word diff again.
Note that despite the name of the first mode, color is used
to highlight the changed parts in all modes if enabled.
--word-diff-regex=<regex>
Use <regex> to decide what a word is, instead of considering
runs of non-whitespace to be a word. Also implies --word-diff
unless it was already enabled.
Every non-overlapping match of the <regex> is considered a
word. Anything between these matches is considered whitespace
and ignored(!) for the purposes of finding differences. You
may want to append |[^[:space:]] to your regular expression
to make sure that it matches all non-whitespace characters. A
match that contains a newline is silently truncated(!) at the
newline.
For example, --word-diff-regex=. will treat each character
as a word and, correspondingly, show differences character by
character.
The regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration
option, see gitattributes(5) or git-config(1). Giving it
explicitly overrides any diff driver or configuration
setting. Diff drivers override configuration settings.
--color-words[=<regex>]
Equivalent to --word-diff=color plus (if a regex was
specified) --word-diff-regex=<regex>.
--no-renames
Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration file
gives the default to do so.
--[no-]rename-empty
Whether to use empty blobs as rename source.
--check
Warn if changes introduce conflict markers or whitespace
errors. What are considered whitespace errors is controlled
by core.whitespace configuration. By default, trailing
whitespaces (including lines that consist solely of
whitespaces) and a space character that is immediately
followed by a tab character inside the initial indent of the
line are considered whitespace errors. Exits with non-zero
status if problems are found. Not compatible with
--exit-code.
--ws-error-highlight=<kind>
Highlight whitespace errors in the context, old or new lines
of the diff. Multiple values are separated by comma, none
resets previous values, default reset the list to new and all
is a shorthand for old,new,context. When this option is not
given, and the configuration variable diff.wsErrorHighlight
is not set, only whitespace errors in new lines are
highlighted. The whitespace errors are colored with
color.diff.whitespace.
--full-index
Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full
pre- and post-image blob object names on the "index" line
when generating patch format output.
--binary
In addition to --full-index, output a binary diff that can be
applied with git-apply. Implies --patch.
--abbrev[=<n>]
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name
in diff-raw format output and diff-tree header lines, show
the shortest prefix that is at least <n> hexdigits long that
uniquely refers the object. In diff-patch output format,
--full-index takes higher precedence, i.e. if --full-index is
specified, full blob names will be shown regardless of
--abbrev. Non default number of digits can be specified with
--abbrev=<n>.
-B[<n>][/<m>], --break-rewrites[=[<n>][/<m>]]
Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and
create. This serves two purposes:
It affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite
of a file not as a series of deletion and insertion mixed
together with a very few lines that happen to match textually
as the context, but as a single deletion of everything old
followed by a single insertion of everything new, and the
number m controls this aspect of the -B option (defaults to
60%). -B/70% specifies that less than 30% of the original
should remain in the result for Git to consider it a total
rewrite (i.e. otherwise the resulting patch will be a series
of deletion and insertion mixed together with context lines).
When used with -M, a totally-rewritten file is also
considered as the source of a rename (usually -M only
considers a file that disappeared as the source of a rename),
and the number n controls this aspect of the -B option
(defaults to 50%). -B20% specifies that a change with
addition and deletion compared to 20% or more of the file's
size are eligible for being picked up as a possible source of
a rename to another file.
-M[<n>], --find-renames[=<n>]
If generating diffs, detect and report renames for each
commit. For following files across renames while traversing
history, see --follow. If n is specified, it is a threshold
on the similarity index (i.e. amount of addition/deletions
compared to the file's size). For example, -M90% means Git
should consider a delete/add pair to be a rename if more than
90% of the file hasn't changed. Without a % sign, the number
is to be read as a fraction, with a decimal point before it.
I.e., -M5 becomes 0.5, and is thus the same as -M50%.
Similarly, -M05 is the same as -M5%. To limit detection to
exact renames, use -M100%. The default similarity index is
50%.
-C[<n>], --find-copies[=<n>]
Detect copies as well as renames. See also
--find-copies-harder. If n is specified, it has the same
meaning as for -M<n>.
--find-copies-harder
For performance reasons, by default, -C option finds copies
only if the original file of the copy was modified in the
same changeset. This flag makes the command inspect
unmodified files as candidates for the source of copy. This
is a very expensive operation for large projects, so use it
with caution. Giving more than one -C option has the same
effect.
-D, --irreversible-delete
Omit the preimage for deletes, i.e. print only the header but
not the diff between the preimage and /dev/null. The
resulting patch is not meant to be applied with patch or git
apply; this is solely for people who want to just concentrate
on reviewing the text after the change. In addition, the
output obviously lacks enough information to apply such a
patch in reverse, even manually, hence the name of the
option.
When used together with -B, omit also the preimage in the
deletion part of a delete/create pair.
-l<num>
The -M and -C options involve some preliminary steps that can
detect subsets of renames/copies cheaply, followed by an
exhaustive fallback portion that compares all remaining
unpaired destinations to all relevant sources. (For renames,
only remaining unpaired sources are relevant; for copies, all
original sources are relevant.) For N sources and
destinations, this exhaustive check is O(N^2). This option
prevents the exhaustive portion of rename/copy detection from
running if the number of source/destination files involved
exceeds the specified number. Defaults to diff.renameLimit.
Note that a value of 0 is treated as unlimited.
--diff-filter=[(A|C|D|M|R|T|U|X|B)...[*]]
Select only files that are Added (A), Copied (C), Deleted
(D), Modified (M), Renamed (R), have their type (i.e. regular
file, symlink, submodule, ...) changed (T), are Unmerged (U),
are Unknown (X), or have had their pairing Broken (B). Any
combination of the filter characters (including none) can be
used. When * (All-or-none) is added to the combination, all
paths are selected if there is any file that matches other
criteria in the comparison; if there is no file that matches
other criteria, nothing is selected.
Also, these upper-case letters can be downcased to exclude.
E.g. --diff-filter=ad excludes added and deleted paths.
Note that not all diffs can feature all types. For instance,
diffs from the index to the working tree can never have Added
entries (because the set of paths included in the diff is
limited by what is in the index). Similarly, copied and
renamed entries cannot appear if detection for those types is
disabled.
-S<string>
Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of
the specified string (i.e. addition/deletion) in a file.
Intended for the scripter's use.
It is useful when you're looking for an exact block of code
(like a struct), and want to know the history of that block
since it first came into being: use the feature iteratively
to feed the interesting block in the preimage back into -S,
and keep going until you get the very first version of the
block.
Binary files are searched as well.
-G<regex>
Look for differences whose patch text contains added/removed
lines that match <regex>.
To illustrate the difference between -S<regex>
--pickaxe-regex and -G<regex>, consider a commit with the
following diff in the same file:
+ return frotz(nitfol, two->ptr, 1, 0);
...
- hit = frotz(nitfol, mf2.ptr, 1, 0);
While git log -G"frotz\(nitfol" will show this commit, git
log -S"frotz\(nitfol" --pickaxe-regex will not (because the
number of occurrences of that string did not change).
Unless --text is supplied patches of binary files without a
textconv filter will be ignored.
See the pickaxe entry in gitdiffcore(7) for more information.
--find-object=<object-id>
Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of
the specified object. Similar to -S, just the argument is
different in that it doesn't search for a specific string but
for a specific object id.
The object can be a blob or a submodule commit. It implies
the -t option in git-log to also find trees.
--pickaxe-all
When -S or -G finds a change, show all the changes in that
changeset, not just the files that contain the change in
<string>.
--pickaxe-regex
Treat the <string> given to -S as an extended POSIX regular
expression to match.
-O<orderfile>
Control the order in which files appear in the output. This
overrides the diff.orderFile configuration variable (see
git-config(1)). To cancel diff.orderFile, use -O/dev/null.
The output order is determined by the order of glob patterns
in <orderfile>. All files with pathnames that match the first
pattern are output first, all files with pathnames that match
the second pattern (but not the first) are output next, and
so on. All files with pathnames that do not match any pattern
are output last, as if there was an implicit match-all
pattern at the end of the file. If multiple pathnames have
the same rank (they match the same pattern but no earlier
patterns), their output order relative to each other is the
normal order.
<orderfile> is parsed as follows:
• Blank lines are ignored, so they can be used as
separators for readability.
• Lines starting with a hash ("#") are ignored, so they can
be used for comments. Add a backslash ("\") to the
beginning of the pattern if it starts with a hash.
• Each other line contains a single pattern.
Patterns have the same syntax and semantics as patterns used
for fnmatch(3) without the FNM_PATHNAME flag, except a
pathname also matches a pattern if removing any number of the
final pathname components matches the pattern. For example,
the pattern "foo*bar" matches "fooasdfbar" and
"foo/bar/baz/asdf" but not "foobarx".
--skip-to=<file>, --rotate-to=<file>
Discard the files before the named <file> from the output
(i.e. skip to), or move them to the end of the output (i.e.
rotate to). These were invented primarily for use of the git
difftool command, and may not be very useful otherwise.
-R
Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or
on-disk file to tree contents.
--relative[=<path>], --no-relative
When run from a subdirectory of the project, it can be told
to exclude changes outside the directory and show pathnames
relative to it with this option. When you are not in a
subdirectory (e.g. in a bare repository), you can name which
subdirectory to make the output relative to by giving a
<path> as an argument. --no-relative can be used to
countermand both diff.relative config option and previous
--relative.
-a, --text
Treat all files as text.
--ignore-cr-at-eol
Ignore carriage-return at the end of line when doing a
comparison.
--ignore-space-at-eol
Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
-b, --ignore-space-change
Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores
whitespace at line end, and considers all other sequences of
one or more whitespace characters to be equivalent.
-w, --ignore-all-space
Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores
differences even if one line has whitespace where the other
line has none.
--ignore-blank-lines
Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.
-I<regex>, --ignore-matching-lines=<regex>
Ignore changes whose all lines match <regex>. This option may
be specified more than once.
--inter-hunk-context=<lines>
Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified
number of lines, thereby fusing hunks that are close to each
other. Defaults to diff.interHunkContext or 0 if the config
option is unset.
-W, --function-context
Show whole function as context lines for each change. The
function names are determined in the same way as git diff
works out patch hunk headers (see Defining a custom
hunk-header in gitattributes(5)).
--ext-diff
Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set an
external diff driver with gitattributes(5), you need to use
this option with git-log(1) and friends.
--no-ext-diff
Disallow external diff drivers.
--textconv, --no-textconv
Allow (or disallow) external text conversion filters to be
run when comparing binary files. See gitattributes(5) for
details. Because textconv filters are typically a one-way
conversion, the resulting diff is suitable for human
consumption, but cannot be applied. For this reason, textconv
filters are enabled by default only for git-diff(1) and
git-log(1), but not for git-format-patch(1) or diff plumbing
commands.
--ignore-submodules[=<when>]
Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation. <when>
can be either "none", "untracked", "dirty" or "all", which is
the default. Using "none" will consider the submodule
modified when it either contains untracked or modified files
or its HEAD differs from the commit recorded in the
superproject and can be used to override any settings of the
ignore option in git-config(1) or gitmodules(5). When
"untracked" is used submodules are not considered dirty when
they only contain untracked content (but they are still
scanned for modified content). Using "dirty" ignores all
changes to the work tree of submodules, only changes to the
commits stored in the superproject are shown (this was the
behavior until 1.7.0). Using "all" hides all changes to
submodules.
--src-prefix=<prefix>
Show the given source prefix instead of "a/".
--dst-prefix=<prefix>
Show the given destination prefix instead of "b/".
--no-prefix
Do not show any source or destination prefix.
--line-prefix=<prefix>
Prepend an additional prefix to every line of output.
--ita-invisible-in-index
By default entries added by "git add -N" appear as an
existing empty file in "git diff" and a new file in "git diff
--cached". This option makes the entry appear as a new file
in "git diff" and non-existent in "git diff --cached". This
option could be reverted with --ita-visible-in-index. Both
options are experimental and could be removed in future.
For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also
gitdiffcore(7).
