Documentation / git-diff-tree.txton commit [PATCH] Document the --root switch of git-diff-tree (0746b62)
   1git-diff-tree(1)
   2================
   3v0.1, May 2005
   4
   5NAME
   6----
   7git-diff-tree - Compares the content and mode of blobs found via two tree objects
   8
   9
  10SYNOPSIS
  11--------
  12'git-diff-tree' [-p] [-r] [-z] [--stdin] [-M] [-R] [-C] [-S<string>] [-m] [-s] [-v] [-t] <tree-ish> <tree-ish> [<pattern>]\*
  13
  14DESCRIPTION
  15-----------
  16Compares the content and mode of the blobs found via two tree objects.
  17
  18Note that "git-diff-tree" can use the tree encapsulated in a commit object.
  19
  20OPTIONS
  21-------
  22<tree-ish>::
  23        The id of a tree object.
  24
  25<pattern>::
  26        If provided, the results are limited to a subset of files
  27        matching one of these prefix strings.
  28        ie file matches `/^<pattern1>|<pattern2>|.../`
  29        Note that pattern does not provide any wildcard or regexp
  30        features.
  31
  32-p::
  33        generate patch (see section on generating patches).  For
  34        git-diff-tree, this flag implies '-r' as well.
  35
  36-M::
  37        Detect renames.
  38
  39-C::
  40        Detect copies as well as renames.
  41
  42-R::
  43        Output diff in reverse.
  44
  45-S<string>::
  46        Look for differences that contains the change in <string>.
  47
  48-r::
  49        recurse
  50
  51-t::
  52        show tree entry itself as well as subtrees.  Implies -r.
  53
  54-z::
  55        \0 line termination on output
  56
  57--root::
  58        When '--root' is specified the initial commit will be showed as a big
  59        creation event. This is equivalent to a diff against the NULL tree.
  60
  61--stdin::
  62        When '--stdin' is specified, the command does not take
  63        <tree-ish> arguments from the command line.  Instead, it
  64        reads either one <commit> or a pair of <tree-ish>
  65        separated with a single space from its standard input.
  66+
  67When a single commit is given on one line of such input, it compares
  68the commit with its parents.  The following flags further affects its
  69behaviour.  This does not apply to the case where two <tree-ish>
  70separated with a single space are given.
  71
  72-m::
  73        By default, "git-diff-tree --stdin" does not show
  74        differences for merge commits.  With this flag, it shows
  75        differences to that commit from all of its parents.
  76
  77-s::
  78        By default, "git-diff-tree --stdin" shows differences,
  79        either in machine-readable form (without '-p') or in patch
  80        form (with '-p').  This output can be supressed.  It is
  81        only useful with '-v' flag.
  82
  83-v::
  84        This flag causes "git-diff-tree --stdin" to also show
  85        the commit message before the differences.
  86
  87
  88Limiting Output
  89---------------
  90If you're only interested in differences in a subset of files, for
  91example some architecture-specific files, you might do:
  92
  93        git-diff-tree -r <tree-ish> <tree-ish> arch/ia64 include/asm-ia64
  94
  95and it will only show you what changed in those two directories.
  96
  97Or if you are searching for what changed in just `kernel/sched.c`, just do
  98
  99        git-diff-tree -r <tree-ish> <tree-ish> kernel/sched.c
 100
 101and it will ignore all differences to other files.
 102
 103The pattern is always the prefix, and is matched exactly.  There are no
 104wildcards.  Even stricter, it has to match complete path comonent.
 105I.e. "foo" does not pick up `foobar.h`.  "foo" does match `foo/bar.h`
 106so it can be used to name subdirectories.
 107
 108An example of normal usage is:
 109
 110  torvalds@ppc970:~/git> git-diff-tree 5319e4......
 111  *100664->100664 blob    ac348b.......->a01513.......      git-fsck-cache.c
 112
 113which tells you that the last commit changed just one file (it's from
 114this one:
 115
 116  commit 3c6f7ca19ad4043e9e72fa94106f352897e651a8
 117  tree 5319e4d609cdd282069cc4dce33c1db559539b03
 118  parent b4e628ea30d5ab3606119d2ea5caeab141d38df7
 119  author Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> Sat Apr 9 12:02:30 2005
 120  committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> Sat Apr 9 12:02:30 2005
 121
 122  Make "git-fsck-cache" print out all the root commits it finds.
 123
 124  Once I do the reference tracking, I'll also make it print out all the
 125  HEAD commits it finds, which is even more interesting.
 126
 127in case you care).
 128
 129Output format
 130-------------
 131include::diff-format.txt[]
 132
 133
 134Author
 135------
 136Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
 137
 138Documentation
 139--------------
 140Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
 141
 142GIT
 143---
 144Part of the link:git.html[git] suite
 145