From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2009 06:34:25 GMT
Subject: Re: how to diff versions of a file
Message-ID: <7vk588do5q.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.10.0902022206060.28633@asgard.lang.hm>

david@lang.hm writes:

> I don't think it's trivial

I think you meant to say it _is_ trivial.

> If you just wanted three commits ago you could do
>
> git diff HEAD..HEAD^^^ tree.c

That would give you a reverse diff; I think you probably meant the other
way around, "git diff HEAD~3 HEAD tree.c".

> but three changes to tree.c ago I think you need to do multiple
> iterations of git blame to find out what commit was three edits ago.

git diff $(git rev-list -3 HEAD -- tree.c | sed -n -e '$p') HEAD -- tree.c

This assumes that the history is linear but your statement "three edits
ago" already assumes that, so...