Documentation / git-diff-tree.txton commit git-init-db: set up the full default environment (cad88fd)
   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>] [--pickaxe-all] [-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--pickaxe-all::
  49        When -S finds a change, show all the changes in that
  50        changeset, not just the files that contains the change
  51        in <string>.
  52
  53-r::
  54        recurse
  55
  56-t::
  57        show tree entry itself as well as subtrees.  Implies -r.
  58
  59-z::
  60        \0 line termination on output
  61
  62--root::
  63        When '--root' is specified the initial commit will be showed as a big
  64        creation event. This is equivalent to a diff against the NULL tree.
  65
  66--stdin::
  67        When '--stdin' is specified, the command does not take
  68        <tree-ish> arguments from the command line.  Instead, it
  69        reads either one <commit> or a pair of <tree-ish>
  70        separated with a single space from its standard input.
  71+
  72When a single commit is given on one line of such input, it compares
  73the commit with its parents.  The following flags further affects its
  74behaviour.  This does not apply to the case where two <tree-ish>
  75separated with a single space are given.
  76
  77-m::
  78        By default, "git-diff-tree --stdin" does not show
  79        differences for merge commits.  With this flag, it shows
  80        differences to that commit from all of its parents.
  81
  82-s::
  83        By default, "git-diff-tree --stdin" shows differences,
  84        either in machine-readable form (without '-p') or in patch
  85        form (with '-p').  This output can be supressed.  It is
  86        only useful with '-v' flag.
  87
  88-v::
  89        This flag causes "git-diff-tree --stdin" to also show
  90        the commit message before the differences.
  91
  92
  93Limiting Output
  94---------------
  95If you're only interested in differences in a subset of files, for
  96example some architecture-specific files, you might do:
  97
  98        git-diff-tree -r <tree-ish> <tree-ish> arch/ia64 include/asm-ia64
  99
 100and it will only show you what changed in those two directories.
 101
 102Or if you are searching for what changed in just `kernel/sched.c`, just do
 103
 104        git-diff-tree -r <tree-ish> <tree-ish> kernel/sched.c
 105
 106and it will ignore all differences to other files.
 107
 108The pattern is always the prefix, and is matched exactly.  There are no
 109wildcards.  Even stricter, it has to match complete path comonent.
 110I.e. "foo" does not pick up `foobar.h`.  "foo" does match `foo/bar.h`
 111so it can be used to name subdirectories.
 112
 113An example of normal usage is:
 114
 115  torvalds@ppc970:~/git> git-diff-tree 5319e4......
 116  *100664->100664 blob    ac348b.......->a01513.......      git-fsck-cache.c
 117
 118which tells you that the last commit changed just one file (it's from
 119this one:
 120
 121  commit 3c6f7ca19ad4043e9e72fa94106f352897e651a8
 122  tree 5319e4d609cdd282069cc4dce33c1db559539b03
 123  parent b4e628ea30d5ab3606119d2ea5caeab141d38df7
 124  author Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> Sat Apr 9 12:02:30 2005
 125  committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> Sat Apr 9 12:02:30 2005
 126
 127  Make "git-fsck-cache" print out all the root commits it finds.
 128
 129  Once I do the reference tracking, I'll also make it print out all the
 130  HEAD commits it finds, which is even more interesting.
 131
 132in case you care).
 133
 134Output format
 135-------------
 136include::diff-format.txt[]
 137
 138
 139Author
 140------
 141Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
 142
 143Documentation
 144--------------
 145Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
 146
 147GIT
 148---
 149Part of the link:git.html[git] suite
 150