How to “git show” a merge commit with combined diff output even when every changed file agrees with one of the parents?

Question

After doing a \"simple\" merge (one without conflicts), git show usually only shows something like

commit 0e1329e551a5700614a2a34d8101e92fd9f2ca         


        

Answer 1

A better solution (mentioned by @KrisNuttycombe):

git diff fc17405...ee2de56

for the merge commit:

commit 0e1329e551a5700614a2a34d8101e92fd9f2cad6 (HEAD, master)
Merge: fc17405 ee2de56
Author: Tilman Vogel 
Date:   Tue Feb 22 00:27:17 2011 +0100

to show all of the changes on ee2de56 that are reachable from commits on fc17405. Note the order of the commit hashes - it's the same as shown in the merge info: Merge: fc17405 ee2de56

Also note the 3 dots ... instead of two!

For a list of changed files, you can use:

git diff fc17405...ee2de56 --name-only