Documentation / git-diff-tree.txton commit Say when --track is useful in the git-checkout docs. (ac15074)
   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 showed 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 either one <commit> or a pair of <tree-ish>
  53        separated with a single space from its standard input.
  54+
  55When a single commit is given on one line of such input, it compares
  56the commit with its parents.  The following flags further affects its
  57behavior.  This does not apply to the case where two <tree-ish>
  58separated with a single space are given.
  59
  60-m::
  61        By default, "git-diff-tree --stdin" does not show
  62        differences for merge commits.  With this flag, it shows
  63        differences to that commit from all of its parents. See
  64        also '-c'.
  65
  66-s::
  67        By default, "git-diff-tree --stdin" shows differences,
  68        either in machine-readable form (without '-p') or in patch
  69        form (with '-p').  This output can be suppressed.  It is
  70        only useful with '-v' flag.
  71
  72-v::
  73        This flag causes "git-diff-tree --stdin" to also show
  74        the commit message before the differences.
  75
  76include::pretty-options.txt[]
  77
  78--no-commit-id::
  79        git-diff-tree outputs a line with the commit ID when
  80        applicable.  This flag suppressed the commit ID output.
  81
  82-c::
  83        This flag changes the way a merge commit is displayed
  84        (which means it is useful only when the command is given
  85        one <tree-ish>, or '--stdin').  It shows the differences
  86        from each of the parents to the merge result simultaneously
  87        instead of showing pairwise diff between a parent and the
  88        result one at a time (which is what the '-m' option does).
  89        Furthermore, it lists only files which were modified
  90        from all parents.
  91
  92--cc::
  93        This flag changes the way a merge commit patch is displayed,
  94        in a similar way to the '-c' option. It implies the '-c'
  95        and '-p' options and further compresses the patch output
  96        by omitting hunks that show differences from only one
  97        parent, or show the same change from all but one parent
  98        for an Octopus merge.  When this optimization makes all
  99        hunks disappear, the commit itself and the commit log
 100        message is not shown, just like in any other "empty diff" case.
 101
 102--always::
 103        Show the commit itself and the commit log message even
 104        if the diff itself is empty.
 105
 106
 107include::pretty-formats.txt[]
 108
 109
 110Limiting Output
 111---------------
 112If you're only interested in differences in a subset of files, for
 113example some architecture-specific files, you might do:
 114
 115        git-diff-tree -r <tree-ish> <tree-ish> arch/ia64 include/asm-ia64
 116
 117and it will only show you what changed in those two directories.
 118
 119Or if you are searching for what changed in just `kernel/sched.c`, just do
 120
 121        git-diff-tree -r <tree-ish> <tree-ish> kernel/sched.c
 122
 123and it will ignore all differences to other files.
 124
 125The pattern is always the prefix, and is matched exactly.  There are no
 126wildcards.  Even stricter, it has to match a complete path component.
 127I.e. "foo" does not pick up `foobar.h`.  "foo" does match `foo/bar.h`
 128so it can be used to name subdirectories.
 129
 130An example of normal usage is:
 131
 132  torvalds@ppc970:~/git> git-diff-tree 5319e4......
 133  *100664->100664 blob    ac348b.......->a01513.......      git-fsck-objects.c
 134
 135which tells you that the last commit changed just one file (it's from
 136this one:
 137
 138-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 139commit 3c6f7ca19ad4043e9e72fa94106f352897e651a8
 140tree 5319e4d609cdd282069cc4dce33c1db559539b03
 141parent b4e628ea30d5ab3606119d2ea5caeab141d38df7
 142author Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> Sat Apr 9 12:02:30 2005
 143committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> Sat Apr 9 12:02:30 2005
 144
 145Make "git-fsck-objects" print out all the root commits it finds.
 146
 147Once I do the reference tracking, I'll also make it print out all the
 148HEAD commits it finds, which is even more interesting.
 149-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 150
 151in case you care).
 152
 153Output format
 154-------------
 155include::diff-format.txt[]
 156
 157
 158Author
 159------
 160Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
 161
 162Documentation
 163--------------
 164Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
 165
 166GIT
 167---
 168Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite