How do I see the commit differences between branches in git?

Question

I\'m on branch-X and have added a couple more commits on top of it. I want to see all the differences between MASTER and the branch that I am on in terms of commits. I could

Answer 1

if you want to use gitk:

gitk master..branch-X

it has a nice old school GUi

Answer 2

You can easily do that with

git log master..branch-X

That will show you commits that branch-X has but master doesn't.

Answer 3

I used some of the answers and found one that fit my case ( make sure all tasks are in the release branch).

Other methods works as well but I found that they might add lines that I do not need, like merge commits that add no value.

git fetch
git log origin/master..origin/release-1.1 --oneline --no-merges

or you can compare your current with master

git fetch
git log origin/master..HEAD --oneline --no-merges

git fetch is there to make sure you are using updated info.

In this way each commit will be on a line and you can copy/paste that into an text editor and start comparing the tasks with the commits that will be merged.

Answer 4

If you want to compare based on the commit messages, you can do the following:

git fetch
git log --oneline origin/master | cut -d' ' -f2- > master_log
git log --oneline origin/branch-X | cut -d' ' -f2- > branchx_log
diff <(sort master_log) <(sort branchx_log)

Answer 5

I'd suggest the following to see the difference "in commits". For symmetric difference, repeat the command with inverted args:

git cherry -v master [your branch, or HEAD as default]

Answer 6

Not the perfect answer but works better for people using Github:

Go to your repo: Insights -> Network