Re: Confusion about diffing branches

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 27, 2007, 00:18 UTC
Message-ID: <7v6431omn8.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070826233555.GA7422@mediacenter.austin.rr.com>

Shawn Bohrer <shawn.bohrer@gmail.com> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

> So I imagine I'm missing something, or perhaps I'm just looking at this
> from the wrong perspective, but here is what I'm seeing.  Lets say I
> have something like:
>
>          A---B topic
>         /
>    C---D---E master
>
> ...
>    git diff master...topic
>
> ... shows me the
> combined diff of A and B.

That is working as designed.

When you are working on topic it is often desired to see "what have I done since I forked?" and "what have they done while I was looking the other way?".

"git diff master topic" (which is the same as "git diff master..topic" -- the two-dot form is just a syntax sugar to avoid mistypes for people who are too used to type two dots as reflex because that is how you express a revision range) shows a squashed diff that is A+B-E, and often people found "-E" part distracting and useless. Three-dot form was invented specifically to address this problem. You do not have to (and you do not _want_ to) use that form if you _want_ to see the -E part of the diff.