Documentation / git-diff-tree.txton commit docs: drop antique comment from Makefile (a3d0551)
   1git-diff-tree(1)
   2================
   3
   4NAME
   5----
   6git-diff-tree - Compares the content and mode of blobs found via two tree objects
   7
   8
   9SYNOPSIS
  10--------
  11[verse]
  12'git diff-tree' [--stdin] [-m] [-s] [-v] [--no-commit-id] [--pretty]
  13              [-t] [-r] [-c | --cc] [--root] [<common diff options>]
  14              <tree-ish> [<tree-ish>] [<path>...]
  15
  16DESCRIPTION
  17-----------
  18Compares the content and mode of the blobs found via two tree objects.
  19
  20If there is only one <tree-ish> given, the commit is compared with its parents
  21(see --stdin below).
  22
  23Note that 'git diff-tree' can use the tree encapsulated in a commit object.
  24
  25OPTIONS
  26-------
  27include::diff-options.txt[]
  28
  29<tree-ish>::
  30        The id of a tree object.
  31
  32<path>...::
  33        If provided, the results are limited to a subset of files
  34        matching one of these prefix strings.
  35        i.e., file matches `/^<pattern1>|<pattern2>|.../`
  36        Note that this parameter does not provide any wildcard or regexp
  37        features.
  38
  39-r::
  40        recurse into sub-trees
  41
  42-t::
  43        show tree entry itself as well as subtrees.  Implies -r.
  44
  45--root::
  46        When '--root' is specified the initial commit will be shown as a big
  47        creation event. This is equivalent to a diff against the NULL tree.
  48
  49--stdin::
  50        When '--stdin' is specified, the command does not take
  51        <tree-ish> arguments from the command line.  Instead, it
  52        reads lines containing either two <tree>, one <commit>, or a
  53        list of <commit> from its standard input.  (Use a single space
  54        as separator.)
  55+
  56When two trees are given, it compares the first tree with the second.
  57When a single commit is given, it compares the commit with its
  58parents.  The remaining commits, when given, are used as if they are
  59parents of the first commit.
  60+
  61When comparing two trees, the ID of both trees (separated by a space
  62and terminated by a newline) is printed before the difference.  When
  63comparing commits, the ID of the first (or only) commit, followed by a
  64newline, is printed.
  65+
  66The following flags further affect the behavior when comparing
  67commits (but not trees).
  68
  69-m::
  70        By default, 'git diff-tree --stdin' does not show
  71        differences for merge commits.  With this flag, it shows
  72        differences to that commit from all of its parents. See
  73        also '-c'.
  74
  75-s::
  76        By default, 'git diff-tree --stdin' shows differences,
  77        either in machine-readable form (without '-p') or in patch
  78        form (with '-p').  This output can be suppressed.  It is
  79        only useful with '-v' flag.
  80
  81-v::
  82        This flag causes 'git diff-tree --stdin' to also show
  83        the commit message before the differences.
  84
  85include::pretty-options.txt[]
  86
  87--no-commit-id::
  88        'git diff-tree' outputs a line with the commit ID when
  89        applicable.  This flag suppressed the commit ID output.
  90
  91-c::
  92        This flag changes the way a merge commit is displayed
  93        (which means it is useful only when the command is given
  94        one <tree-ish>, or '--stdin').  It shows the differences
  95        from each of the parents to the merge result simultaneously
  96        instead of showing pairwise diff between a parent and the
  97        result one at a time (which is what the '-m' option does).
  98        Furthermore, it lists only files which were modified
  99        from all parents.
 100
 101--cc::
 102        This flag changes the way a merge commit patch is displayed,
 103        in a similar way to the '-c' option. It implies the '-c'
 104        and '-p' options and further compresses the patch output
 105        by omitting uninteresting hunks whose the contents in the parents
 106        have only two variants and the merge result picks one of them
 107        without modification.  When all hunks are uninteresting, the commit
 108        itself and the commit log message is not shown, just like in any other
 109        "empty diff" case.
 110
 111--always::
 112        Show the commit itself and the commit log message even
 113        if the diff itself is empty.
 114
 115
 116include::pretty-formats.txt[]
 117
 118
 119Limiting Output
 120---------------
 121If you're only interested in differences in a subset of files, for
 122example some architecture-specific files, you might do:
 123
 124        git diff-tree -r <tree-ish> <tree-ish> arch/ia64 include/asm-ia64
 125
 126and it will only show you what changed in those two directories.
 127
 128Or if you are searching for what changed in just `kernel/sched.c`, just do
 129
 130        git diff-tree -r <tree-ish> <tree-ish> kernel/sched.c
 131
 132and it will ignore all differences to other files.
 133
 134The pattern is always the prefix, and is matched exactly.  There are no
 135wildcards.  Even stricter, it has to match a complete path component.
 136I.e. "foo" does not pick up `foobar.h`.  "foo" does match `foo/bar.h`
 137so it can be used to name subdirectories.
 138
 139An example of normal usage is:
 140
 141  torvalds@ppc970:~/git> git diff-tree --abbrev 5319e4
 142  :100664 100664 ac348b... a01513...    git-fsck-objects.c
 143
 144which tells you that the last commit changed just one file (it's from
 145this one:
 146
 147-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 148commit 3c6f7ca19ad4043e9e72fa94106f352897e651a8
 149tree 5319e4d609cdd282069cc4dce33c1db559539b03
 150parent b4e628ea30d5ab3606119d2ea5caeab141d38df7
 151author Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> Sat Apr 9 12:02:30 2005
 152committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> Sat Apr 9 12:02:30 2005
 153
 154Make "git-fsck-objects" print out all the root commits it finds.
 155
 156Once I do the reference tracking, I'll also make it print out all the
 157HEAD commits it finds, which is even more interesting.
 158-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 159
 160in case you care).
 161
 162
 163include::diff-format.txt[]
 164
 165GIT
 166---
 167Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite