How to diff one file to an arbitrary version in Git?

Question

How can I diff a file, say pom.xml, from the master branch to an arbitrary older version in Git?

Answer 1

For comparing to 5 commit to the current one, both on master, just simply do:

git diff master~5:pom.xml master:pom.xml

Also you can refer to commit hash number, for example if the hash number is x110bd64, you can do something like this to see the difference:

git diff x110bd64 pom.xml