Re: Confusion about diffing branches
Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org> writes:
Show 10 quoted lines
> On Mon, Aug 27, 2007 at 03:21:32PM +0200, Francis Moreau <francis.moro@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> This "inconsistency" had already been raised before. Please refer to:
>> http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au/archives/git/0612/35354.html
>>
>> I shared and still share your feeling about that but it seems that
>> Junio and Linus don't...
>
> Actually, they may have a good point, cf. the thread you point.
> But it is annoying that it is not documented.
Would something like this reduce the annoyance factor?
---
Documentation/git-diff.txt | 20 +++++++++++++++++---
1 files changed, 17 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/git-diff.txt b/Documentation/git-diff.txt
index b36e705..04b62d9 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-diff.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-diff.txt
@@ -42,14 +42,28 @@ tree and the index file, or the index file and the working tree.
branch name to compare with the tip of a different
branch.
-'git-diff' [--options] <commit> <commit> [--] [<path>...]::
+'git-diff' [--options] <commit1> <commit2> [--] [<path>...]::
This form is to view the changes between two <commit>,
for example, tips of two branches.
+'git-diff' [--options] <commit1>..<commit2> [--] [<path>...]::
+
+ This is identical to the previous one, just to make the
+ specification of two commits look similar to a commit
+ range notation.
+
+'git-diff' [--options] <commit1>...<commit2> [--] [<path>...]::
+
+ This compares the merge base of two commits and the
+ second commit. Useful to view what happened in the
+ history that leads to the second commit since that
+ history forked from the history that leads to the first
+ commit.
+
Just in case if you are doing something exotic, it should be
-noted that all of the <commit> in the above description can be
-any <tree-ish>.
+noted that all of the <commit> in the above description,
+except for the last two variants, can be any <tree-ish>.
For a more complete list of ways to spell <commit>, see
"SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section in gitlink:git-rev-parse[1].
Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>