Provided by: git-man_2.17.1-1ubuntu0.18_all bug

NAME

       git-diff-tree - Compares the content and mode of blobs found via two tree objects

SYNOPSIS

       git diff-tree [--stdin] [-m] [-s] [-v] [--no-commit-id] [--pretty]
                     [-t] [-r] [-c | --cc] [--root] [<common diff options>]
                     <tree-ish> [<tree-ish>] [<path>...]

DESCRIPTION

       Compares the content and mode of the blobs found via two tree objects.

       If there is only one <tree-ish> given, the commit is compared with its parents (see
       --stdin below).

       Note that git diff-tree can use the tree encapsulated in a commit object.

OPTIONS

       -p, -u, --patch
           Generate patch (see section on generating patches).

       -s, --no-patch
           Suppress diff output. Useful for commands like git show that show the patch by
           default, or to cancel the effect of --patch.

       -U<n>, --unified=<n>
           Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of the usual three. Implies -p.

       --raw
           Generate the diff in raw format. This is the default.

       --patch-with-raw
           Synonym for -p --raw.

       --indent-heuristic
           Enable the heuristic that shift diff hunk boundaries to make patches easier to read.
           This is the default.

       --no-indent-heuristic
           Disable the indent heuristic.

       --minimal
           Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced.

       --patience
           Generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.

       --histogram
           Generate a diff using the "histogram diff" algorithm.

       --anchored=<text>
           Generate a diff using the "anchored diff" algorithm.

           This option may be specified more than once.

           If a line exists in both the source and destination, exists only once, and starts with
           this text, this algorithm attempts to prevent it from appearing as a deletion or
           addition in the output. It uses the "patience diff" algorithm internally.

       --diff-algorithm={patience|minimal|histogram|myers}
           Choose a diff algorithm. The variants are as follows:

           default, myers
               The basic greedy diff algorithm. Currently, this is the default.

           minimal
               Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced.

           patience
               Use "patience diff" algorithm when generating patches.

           histogram
               This algorithm extends the patience algorithm to "support low-occurrence common
               elements".

           For instance, if you configured diff.algorithm variable to a non-default value and
           want to use the default one, then you have to use --diff-algorithm=default option.

       --stat[=<width>[,<name-width>[,<count>]]]
           Generate a diffstat. By default, as much space as necessary will be used for the
           filename part, and the rest for the graph part. Maximum width defaults to terminal
           width, or 80 columns if not connected to a terminal, and can be overridden by <width>.
           The width of the filename part can be limited by giving another width <name-width>
           after a comma. The width of the graph part can be limited by using
           --stat-graph-width=<width> (affects all commands generating a stat graph) or by
           setting diff.statGraphWidth=<width> (does not affect git format-patch). By giving a
           third parameter <count>, you can limit the output to the first <count> lines, followed
           by ...  if there are more.

           These parameters can also be set individually with --stat-width=<width>,
           --stat-name-width=<name-width> and --stat-count=<count>.

       --compact-summary
           Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as file creations or
           deletions ("new" or "gone", optionally "+l" if it’s a symlink) and mode changes ("+x"
           or "-x" for adding or removing executable bit respectively) in diffstat. The
           information is put betwen the filename part and the graph part. Implies --stat.

       --numstat
           Similar to --stat, but shows number of added and deleted lines in decimal notation and
           pathname without abbreviation, to make it more machine friendly. For binary files,
           outputs two - instead of saying 0 0.

       --shortstat
           Output only the last line of the --stat format containing total number of modified
           files, as well as number of added and deleted lines.

       --dirstat[=<param1,param2,...>]
           Output the distribution of relative amount of changes for each sub-directory. The
           behavior of --dirstat can be customized by passing it a comma separated list of
           parameters. The defaults are controlled by the diff.dirstat configuration variable
           (see git-config(1)). The following parameters are available:

           changes
               Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that have been removed from the
               source, or added to the destination. This ignores the amount of pure code
               movements within a file. In other words, rearranging lines in a file is not
               counted as much as other changes. This is the default behavior when no parameter
               is given.

           lines
               Compute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular line-based diff analysis, and
               summing the removed/added line counts. (For binary files, count 64-byte chunks
               instead, since binary files have no natural concept of lines). This is a more
               expensive --dirstat behavior than the changes behavior, but it does count
               rearranged lines within a file as much as other changes. The resulting output is
               consistent with what you get from the other --*stat options.

           files
               Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of files changed. Each changed
               file counts equally in the dirstat analysis. This is the computationally cheapest
               --dirstat behavior, since it does not have to look at the file contents at all.

           cumulative
               Count changes in a child directory for the parent directory as well. Note that
               when using cumulative, the sum of the percentages reported may exceed 100%. The
               default (non-cumulative) behavior can be specified with the noncumulative
               parameter.

           <limit>
               An integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by default). Directories
               contributing less than this percentage of the changes are not shown in the output.

           Example: The following will count changed files, while ignoring directories with less
           than 10% of the total amount of changed files, and accumulating child directory counts
           in the parent directories: --dirstat=files,10,cumulative.

       --summary
           Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as creations, renames
           and mode changes.

       --patch-with-stat
           Synonym for -p --stat.

       -z
           When --raw, --numstat, --name-only or --name-status has been given, do not munge
           pathnames and use NULs as output field terminators.

           Without this option, pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted as explained for
           the configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)).

       --name-only
           Show only names of changed files.

       --name-status
           Show only names and status of changed files. See the description of the --diff-filter
           option on what the status letters mean.

       --submodule[=<format>]
           Specify how differences in submodules are shown. When specifying --submodule=short the
           short format is used. This format just shows the names of the commits at the beginning
           and end of the range. When --submodule or --submodule=log is specified, the log format
           is used. This format lists the commits in the range like git-submodule(1) summary
           does. When --submodule=diff is specified, the diff format is used. This format shows
           an inline diff of the changes in the submodule contents between the commit range.
           Defaults to diff.submodule or the short format if the config option is unset.

       --color[=<when>]
           Show colored diff.  --color (i.e. without =<when>) is the same as --color=always.
           <when> can be one of always, never, or auto.

       --no-color
           Turn off colored diff. It is the same as --color=never.

       --color-moved[=<mode>]
           Moved lines of code are colored differently. The <mode> defaults to no if the option
           is not given and to zebra if the option with no mode is given. The mode must be one
           of:

           no
               Moved lines are not highlighted.

           default
               Is a synonym for zebra. This may change to a more sensible mode in the future.

           plain
               Any line that is added in one location and was removed in another location will be
               colored with color.diff.newMoved. Similarly color.diff.oldMoved will be used for
               removed lines that are added somewhere else in the diff. This mode picks up any
               moved line, but it is not very useful in a review to determine if a block of code
               was moved without permutation.

           zebra
               Blocks of moved text of at least 20 alphanumeric characters are detected greedily.
               The detected blocks are painted using either the color.diff.{old,new}Moved color
               or color.diff.{old,new}MovedAlternative. The change between the two colors
               indicates that a new block was detected.

           dimmed_zebra
               Similar to zebra, but additional dimming of uninteresting parts of moved code is
               performed. The bordering lines of two adjacent blocks are considered interesting,
               the rest is uninteresting.

       --word-diff[=<mode>]
           Show a word diff, using the <mode> to delimit changed words. By default, words are
           delimited by whitespace; see --word-diff-regex below. The <mode> defaults to plain,
           and must be one of:

           color
               Highlight changed words using only colors. Implies --color.

           plain
               Show words as [-removed-] and {+added+}. Makes no attempts to escape the
               delimiters if they appear in the input, so the output may be ambiguous.

           porcelain
               Use a special line-based format intended for script consumption.
               Added/removed/unchanged runs are printed in the usual unified diff format,
               starting with a +/-/` ` character at the beginning of the line and extending to
               the end of the line. Newlines in the input are represented by a tilde ~ on a line
               of its own.

           none
               Disable word diff again.

           Note that despite the name of the first mode, color is used to highlight the changed
           parts in all modes if enabled.

       --word-diff-regex=<regex>
           Use <regex> to decide what a word is, instead of considering runs of non-whitespace to
           be a word. Also implies --word-diff unless it was already enabled.

           Every non-overlapping match of the <regex> is considered a word. Anything between
           these matches is considered whitespace and ignored(!) for the purposes of finding
           differences. You may want to append |[^[:space:]] to your regular expression to make
           sure that it matches all non-whitespace characters. A match that contains a newline is
           silently truncated(!) at the newline.

           For example, --word-diff-regex=.  will treat each character as a word and,
           correspondingly, show differences character by character.

           The regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration option, see
           gitattributes(5) or git-config(1). Giving it explicitly overrides any diff driver or
           configuration setting. Diff drivers override configuration settings.

       --color-words[=<regex>]
           Equivalent to --word-diff=color plus (if a regex was specified)
           --word-diff-regex=<regex>.

       --no-renames
           Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration file gives the default to do
           so.

       --check
           Warn if changes introduce conflict markers or whitespace errors. What are considered
           whitespace errors is controlled by core.whitespace configuration. By default, trailing
           whitespaces (including lines that solely consist of whitespaces) and a space character
           that is immediately followed by a tab character inside the initial indent of the line
           are considered whitespace errors. Exits with non-zero status if problems are found.
           Not compatible with --exit-code.

       --ws-error-highlight=<kind>
           Highlight whitespace errors in the context, old or new lines of the diff. Multiple
           values are separated by comma, none resets previous values, default reset the list to
           new and all is a shorthand for old,new,context. When this option is not given, and the
           configuration variable diff.wsErrorHighlight is not set, only whitespace errors in new
           lines are highlighted. The whitespace errors are colored whith color.diff.whitespace.

       --full-index
           Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full pre- and post-image blob
           object names on the "index" line when generating patch format output.

       --binary
           In addition to --full-index, output a binary diff that can be applied with git-apply.

       --abbrev[=<n>]
           Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name in diff-raw format output
           and diff-tree header lines, show only a partial prefix. This is independent of the
           --full-index option above, which controls the diff-patch output format. Non default
           number of digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.

       -B[<n>][/<m>], --break-rewrites[=[<n>][/<m>]]
           Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create. This serves two
           purposes:

           It affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite of a file not as a series
           of deletion and insertion mixed together with a very few lines that happen to match
           textually as the context, but as a single deletion of everything old followed by a
           single insertion of everything new, and the number m controls this aspect of the -B
           option (defaults to 60%).  -B/70% specifies that less than 30% of the original should
           remain in the result for Git to consider it a total rewrite (i.e. otherwise the
           resulting patch will be a series of deletion and insertion mixed together with context
           lines).

           When used with -M, a totally-rewritten file is also considered as the source of a
           rename (usually -M only considers a file that disappeared as the source of a rename),
           and the number n controls this aspect of the -B option (defaults to 50%).  -B20%
           specifies that a change with addition and deletion compared to 20% or more of the
           file’s size are eligible for being picked up as a possible source of a rename to
           another file.

       -M[<n>], --find-renames[=<n>]
           Detect renames. If n is specified, it is a threshold on the similarity index (i.e.
           amount of addition/deletions compared to the file’s size). For example, -M90% means
           Git should consider a delete/add pair to be a rename if more than 90% of the file
           hasn’t changed. Without a % sign, the number is to be read as a fraction, with a
           decimal point before it. I.e., -M5 becomes 0.5, and is thus the same as -M50%.
           Similarly, -M05 is the same as -M5%. To limit detection to exact renames, use -M100%.
           The default similarity index is 50%.

       -C[<n>], --find-copies[=<n>]
           Detect copies as well as renames. See also --find-copies-harder. If n is specified, it
           has the same meaning as for -M<n>.

       --find-copies-harder
           For performance reasons, by default, -C option finds copies only if the original file
           of the copy was modified in the same changeset. This flag makes the command inspect
           unmodified files as candidates for the source of copy. This is a very expensive
           operation for large projects, so use it with caution. Giving more than one -C option
           has the same effect.

       -D, --irreversible-delete
           Omit the preimage for deletes, i.e. print only the header but not the diff between the
           preimage and /dev/null. The resulting patch is not meant to be applied with patch or
           git apply; this is solely for people who want to just concentrate on reviewing the
           text after the change. In addition, the output obviously lacks enough information to
           apply such a patch in reverse, even manually, hence the name of the option.

           When used together with -B, omit also the preimage in the deletion part of a
           delete/create pair.

       -l<num>
           The -M and -C options require O(n^2) processing time where n is the number of
           potential rename/copy targets. This option prevents rename/copy detection from running
           if the number of rename/copy targets exceeds the specified number.

       --diff-filter=[(A|C|D|M|R|T|U|X|B)...[*]]
           Select only files that are Added (A), Copied (C), Deleted (D), Modified (M), Renamed
           (R), have their type (i.e. regular file, symlink, submodule, ...) changed (T), are
           Unmerged (U), are Unknown (X), or have had their pairing Broken (B). Any combination
           of the filter characters (including none) can be used. When * (All-or-none) is added
           to the combination, all paths are selected if there is any file that matches other
           criteria in the comparison; if there is no file that matches other criteria, nothing
           is selected.

           Also, these upper-case letters can be downcased to exclude. E.g.  --diff-filter=ad
           excludes added and deleted paths.

           Note that not all diffs can feature all types. For instance, diffs from the index to
           the working tree can never have Added entries (because the set of paths included in
           the diff is limited by what is in the index). Similarly, copied and renamed entries
           cannot appear if detection for those types is disabled.

       -S<string>
           Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of the specified string
           (i.e. addition/deletion) in a file. Intended for the scripter’s use.

           It is useful when you’re looking for an exact block of code (like a struct), and want
           to know the history of that block since it first came into being: use the feature
           iteratively to feed the interesting block in the preimage back into -S, and keep going
           until you get the very first version of the block.

       -G<regex>
           Look for differences whose patch text contains added/removed lines that match <regex>.

           To illustrate the difference between -S<regex> --pickaxe-regex and -G<regex>, consider
           a commit with the following diff in the same file:

               +    return !regexec(regexp, two->ptr, 1, &regmatch, 0);
               ...
               -    hit = !regexec(regexp, mf2.ptr, 1, &regmatch, 0);

           While git log -G"regexec\(regexp" will show this commit, git log -S"regexec\(regexp"
           --pickaxe-regex will not (because the number of occurrences of that string did not
           change).

           See the pickaxe entry in gitdiffcore(7) for more information.

       --find-object=<object-id>
           Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of the specified object.
           Similar to -S, just the argument is different in that it doesn’t search for a specific
           string but for a specific object id.

           The object can be a blob or a submodule commit. It implies the -t option in git-log to
           also find trees.

       --pickaxe-all
           When -S or -G finds a change, show all the changes in that changeset, not just the
           files that contain the change in <string>.

       --pickaxe-regex
           Treat the <string> given to -S as an extended POSIX regular expression to match.

       -O<orderfile>
           Control the order in which files appear in the output. This overrides the
           diff.orderFile configuration variable (see git-config(1)). To cancel diff.orderFile,
           use -O/dev/null.

           The output order is determined by the order of glob patterns in <orderfile>. All files
           with pathnames that match the first pattern are output first, all files with pathnames
           that match the second pattern (but not the first) are output next, and so on. All
           files with pathnames that do not match any pattern are output last, as if there was an
           implicit match-all pattern at the end of the file. If multiple pathnames have the same
           rank (they match the same pattern but no earlier patterns), their output order
           relative to each other is the normal order.

           <orderfile> is parsed as follows:

           •   Blank lines are ignored, so they can be used as separators for readability.

           •   Lines starting with a hash ("#") are ignored, so they can be used for comments.
               Add a backslash ("\") to the beginning of the pattern if it starts with a hash.

           •   Each other line contains a single pattern.

           Patterns have the same syntax and semantics as patterns used for fnmantch(3) without
           the FNM_PATHNAME flag, except a pathname also matches a pattern if removing any number
           of the final pathname components matches the pattern. For example, the pattern
           "foo*bar" matches "fooasdfbar" and "foo/bar/baz/asdf" but not "foobarx".

       -R
           Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or on-disk file to tree
           contents.

       --relative[=<path>]
           When run from a subdirectory of the project, it can be told to exclude changes outside
           the directory and show pathnames relative to it with this option. When you are not in
           a subdirectory (e.g. in a bare repository), you can name which subdirectory to make
           the output relative to by giving a <path> as an argument.

       -a, --text
           Treat all files as text.

       --ignore-cr-at-eol
           Ignore carrige-return at the end of line when doing a comparison.

       --ignore-space-at-eol
           Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.

       -b, --ignore-space-change
           Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace at line end, and
           considers all other sequences of one or more whitespace characters to be equivalent.

       -w, --ignore-all-space
           Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences even if one line has
           whitespace where the other line has none.

       --ignore-blank-lines
           Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.

       --inter-hunk-context=<lines>
           Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified number of lines, thereby
           fusing hunks that are close to each other. Defaults to diff.interHunkContext or 0 if
           the config option is unset.

       -W, --function-context
           Show whole surrounding functions of changes.

       --exit-code
           Make the program exit with codes similar to diff(1). That is, it exits with 1 if there
           were differences and 0 means no differences.

       --quiet
           Disable all output of the program. Implies --exit-code.

       --ext-diff
           Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set an external diff driver with
           gitattributes(5), you need to use this option with git-log(1) and friends.

       --no-ext-diff
           Disallow external diff drivers.

       --textconv, --no-textconv
           Allow (or disallow) external text conversion filters to be run when comparing binary
           files. See gitattributes(5) for details. Because textconv filters are typically a
           one-way conversion, the resulting diff is suitable for human consumption, but cannot
           be applied. For this reason, textconv filters are enabled by default only for git-
           diff(1) and git-log(1), but not for git-format-patch(1) or diff plumbing commands.

       --ignore-submodules[=<when>]
           Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation. <when> can be either "none",
           "untracked", "dirty" or "all", which is the default. Using "none" will consider the
           submodule modified when it either contains untracked or modified files or its HEAD
           differs from the commit recorded in the superproject and can be used to override any
           settings of the ignore option in git-config(1) or gitmodules(5). When "untracked" is
           used submodules are not considered dirty when they only contain untracked content (but
           they are still scanned for modified content). Using "dirty" ignores all changes to the
           work tree of submodules, only changes to the commits stored in the superproject are
           shown (this was the behavior until 1.7.0). Using "all" hides all changes to
           submodules.

       --src-prefix=<prefix>
           Show the given source prefix instead of "a/".

       --dst-prefix=<prefix>
           Show the given destination prefix instead of "b/".

       --no-prefix
           Do not show any source or destination prefix.

       --line-prefix=<prefix>
           Prepend an additional prefix to every line of output.

       --ita-invisible-in-index
           By default entries added by "git add -N" appear as an existing empty file in "git
           diff" and a new file in "git diff --cached". This option makes the entry appear as a
           new file in "git diff" and non-existent in "git diff --cached". This option could be
           reverted with --ita-visible-in-index. Both options are experimental and could be
           removed in future.

       For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also gitdiffcore(7).

       <tree-ish>
           The id of a tree object.

       <path>...
           If provided, the results are limited to a subset of files matching one of these prefix
           strings. i.e., file matches /^<pattern1>|<pattern2>|.../ Note that this parameter does
           not provide any wildcard or regexp features.

       -r
           recurse into sub-trees

       -t
           show tree entry itself as well as subtrees. Implies -r.

       --root
           When --root is specified the initial commit will be shown as a big creation event.
           This is equivalent to a diff against the NULL tree.

       --stdin
           When --stdin is specified, the command does not take <tree-ish> arguments from the
           command line. Instead, it reads lines containing either two <tree>, one <commit>, or a
           list of <commit> from its standard input. (Use a single space as separator.)

           When two trees are given, it compares the first tree with the second. When a single
           commit is given, it compares the commit with its parents. The remaining commits, when
           given, are used as if they are parents of the first commit.

           When comparing two trees, the ID of both trees (separated by a space and terminated by
           a newline) is printed before the difference. When comparing commits, the ID of the
           first (or only) commit, followed by a newline, is printed.

           The following flags further affect the behavior when comparing commits (but not
           trees).

       -m
           By default, git diff-tree --stdin does not show differences for merge commits. With
           this flag, it shows differences to that commit from all of its parents. See also -c.

       -s
           By default, git diff-tree --stdin shows differences, either in machine-readable form
           (without -p) or in patch form (with -p). This output can be suppressed. It is only
           useful with -v flag.

       -v
           This flag causes git diff-tree --stdin to also show the commit message before the
           differences.

       --pretty[=<format>], --format=<format>
           Pretty-print the contents of the commit logs in a given format, where <format> can be
           one of oneline, short, medium, full, fuller, email, raw, format:<string> and
           tformat:<string>. When <format> is none of the above, and has %placeholder in it, it
           acts as if --pretty=tformat:<format> were given.

           See the "PRETTY FORMATS" section for some additional details for each format. When
           =<format> part is omitted, it defaults to medium.

           Note: you can specify the default pretty format in the repository configuration (see
           git-config(1)).

       --abbrev-commit
           Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name, show only a
           partial prefix. Non default number of digits can be specified with "--abbrev=<n>"
           (which also modifies diff output, if it is displayed).

           This should make "--pretty=oneline" a whole lot more readable for people using
           80-column terminals.

       --no-abbrev-commit
           Show the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name. This negates --abbrev-commit and
           those options which imply it such as "--oneline". It also overrides the
           log.abbrevCommit variable.

       --oneline
           This is a shorthand for "--pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit" used together.

       --encoding=<encoding>
           The commit objects record the encoding used for the log message in their encoding
           header; this option can be used to tell the command to re-code the commit log message
           in the encoding preferred by the user. For non plumbing commands this defaults to
           UTF-8. Note that if an object claims to be encoded in X and we are outputting in X, we
           will output the object verbatim; this means that invalid sequences in the original
           commit may be copied to the output.

       --expand-tabs=<n>, --expand-tabs, --no-expand-tabs
           Perform a tab expansion (replace each tab with enough spaces to fill to the next
           display column that is multiple of <n>) in the log message before showing it in the
           output.  --expand-tabs is a short-hand for --expand-tabs=8, and --no-expand-tabs is a
           short-hand for --expand-tabs=0, which disables tab expansion.

           By default, tabs are expanded in pretty formats that indent the log message by 4
           spaces (i.e.  medium, which is the default, full, and fuller).

       --notes[=<treeish>]
           Show the notes (see git-notes(1)) that annotate the commit, when showing the commit
           log message. This is the default for git log, git show and git whatchanged commands
           when there is no --pretty, --format, or --oneline option given on the command line.

           By default, the notes shown are from the notes refs listed in the core.notesRef and
           notes.displayRef variables (or corresponding environment overrides). See git-config(1)
           for more details.

           With an optional <treeish> argument, use the treeish to find the notes to display. The
           treeish can specify the full refname when it begins with refs/notes/; when it begins
           with notes/, refs/ and otherwise refs/notes/ is prefixed to form a full name of the
           ref.

           Multiple --notes options can be combined to control which notes are being displayed.
           Examples: "--notes=foo" will show only notes from "refs/notes/foo"; "--notes=foo
           --notes" will show both notes from "refs/notes/foo" and from the default notes ref(s).

       --no-notes
           Do not show notes. This negates the above --notes option, by resetting the list of
           notes refs from which notes are shown. Options are parsed in the order given on the
           command line, so e.g. "--notes --notes=foo --no-notes --notes=bar" will only show
           notes from "refs/notes/bar".

       --show-notes[=<treeish>], --[no-]standard-notes
           These options are deprecated. Use the above --notes/--no-notes options instead.

       --show-signature
           Check the validity of a signed commit object by passing the signature to gpg --verify
           and show the output.

       --no-commit-id
           git diff-tree outputs a line with the commit ID when applicable. This flag suppressed
           the commit ID output.

       -c
           This flag changes the way a merge commit is displayed (which means it is useful only
           when the command is given one <tree-ish>, or --stdin). It shows the differences from
           each of the parents to the merge result simultaneously instead of showing pairwise
           diff between a parent and the result one at a time (which is what the -m option does).
           Furthermore, it lists only files which were modified from all parents.

       --cc
           This flag changes the way a merge commit patch is displayed, in a similar way to the
           -c option. It implies the -c and -p options and further compresses the patch output by
           omitting uninteresting hunks whose the contents in the parents have only two variants
           and the merge result picks one of them without modification. When all hunks are
           uninteresting, the commit itself and the commit log message is not shown, just like in
           any other "empty diff" case.

       --always
           Show the commit itself and the commit log message even if the diff itself is empty.

PRETTY FORMATS

       If the commit is a merge, and if the pretty-format is not oneline, email or raw, an
       additional line is inserted before the Author: line. This line begins with "Merge: " and
       the sha1s of ancestral commits are printed, separated by spaces. Note that the listed
       commits may not necessarily be the list of the direct parent commits if you have limited
       your view of history: for example, if you are only interested in changes related to a
       certain directory or file.

       There are several built-in formats, and you can define additional formats by setting a
       pretty.<name> config option to either another format name, or a format: string, as
       described below (see git-config(1)). Here are the details of the built-in formats:

       •   oneline

               <sha1> <title line>

           This is designed to be as compact as possible.

       •   short

               commit <sha1>
               Author: <author>

               <title line>

       •   medium

               commit <sha1>
               Author: <author>
               Date:   <author date>

               <title line>

               <full commit message>

       •   full

               commit <sha1>
               Author: <author>
               Commit: <committer>

               <title line>

               <full commit message>

       •   fuller

               commit <sha1>
               Author:     <author>
               AuthorDate: <author date>
               Commit:     <committer>
               CommitDate: <committer date>

               <title line>

               <full commit message>

       •   email

               From <sha1> <date>
               From: <author>
               Date: <author date>
               Subject: [PATCH] <title line>

               <full commit message>

       •   raw

           The raw format shows the entire commit exactly as stored in the commit object.
           Notably, the SHA-1s are displayed in full, regardless of whether --abbrev or
           --no-abbrev are used, and parents information show the true parent commits, without
           taking grafts or history simplification into account. Note that this format affects
           the way commits are displayed, but not the way the diff is shown e.g. with git log
           --raw. To get full object names in a raw diff format, use --no-abbrev.

       •   format:<string>

           The format:<string> format allows you to specify which information you want to show.
           It works a little bit like printf format, with the notable exception that you get a
           newline with %n instead of \n.

           E.g, format:"The author of %h was %an, %ar%nThe title was >>%s<<%n" would show
           something like this:

               The author of fe6e0ee was Junio C Hamano, 23 hours ago
               The title was >>t4119: test autocomputing -p<n> for traditional diff input.<<

           The placeholders are:

           •   %H: commit hash

           •   %h: abbreviated commit hash

           •   %T: tree hash

           •   %t: abbreviated tree hash

           •   %P: parent hashes

           •   %p: abbreviated parent hashes

           •   %an: author name

           •   %aN: author name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))

           •   %ae: author email

           •   %aE: author email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))

           •   %ad: author date (format respects --date= option)

           •   %aD: author date, RFC2822 style

           •   %ar: author date, relative

           •   %at: author date, UNIX timestamp

           •   %ai: author date, ISO 8601-like format

           •   %aI: author date, strict ISO 8601 format

           •   %cn: committer name

           •   %cN: committer name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))

           •   %ce: committer email

           •   %cE: committer email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))

           •   %cd: committer date (format respects --date= option)

           •   %cD: committer date, RFC2822 style

           •   %cr: committer date, relative

           •   %ct: committer date, UNIX timestamp

           •   %ci: committer date, ISO 8601-like format

           •   %cI: committer date, strict ISO 8601 format

           •   %d: ref names, like the --decorate option of git-log(1)

           •   %D: ref names without the " (", ")" wrapping.

           •   %e: encoding

           •   %s: subject

           •   %f: sanitized subject line, suitable for a filename

           •   %b: body

           •   %B: raw body (unwrapped subject and body)

           •   %N: commit notes

           •   %GG: raw verification message from GPG for a signed commit

           •   %G?: show "G" for a good (valid) signature, "B" for a bad signature, "U" for a
               good signature with unknown validity, "X" for a good signature that has expired,
               "Y" for a good signature made by an expired key, "R" for a good signature made by
               a revoked key, "E" if the signature cannot be checked (e.g. missing key) and "N"
               for no signature

           •   %GS: show the name of the signer for a signed commit

           •   %GK: show the key used to sign a signed commit

           •   %gD: reflog selector, e.g., refs/stash@{1} or refs/stash@{2 minutes ago}; the
               format follows the rules described for the -g option. The portion before the @ is
               the refname as given on the command line (so git log -g refs/heads/master would
               yield refs/heads/master@{0}).

           •   %gd: shortened reflog selector; same as %gD, but the refname portion is shortened
               for human readability (so refs/heads/master becomes just master).

           •   %gn: reflog identity name

           •   %gN: reflog identity name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-
               blame(1))

           •   %ge: reflog identity email

           •   %gE: reflog identity email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-
               blame(1))

           •   %gs: reflog subject

           •   %Cred: switch color to red

           •   %Cgreen: switch color to green

           •   %Cblue: switch color to blue

           •   %Creset: reset color

           •   %C(...): color specification, as described under Values in the "CONFIGURATION
               FILE" section of git-config(1). By default, colors are shown only when enabled for
               log output (by color.diff, color.ui, or --color, and respecting the auto settings
               of the former if we are going to a terminal).  %C(auto,...)  is accepted as a
               historical synonym for the default (e.g., %C(auto,red)). Specifying %C(always,...)
               will show the colors even when color is not otherwise enabled (though consider
               just using `--color=always to enable color for the whole output, including this
               format and anything else git might color).  auto alone (i.e.  %C(auto)) will turn
               on auto coloring on the next placeholders until the color is switched again.

           •   %m: left (<), right (>) or boundary (-) mark

           •   %n: newline

           •   %%: a raw %%x00: print a byte from a hex code

           •   %w([<w>[,<i1>[,<i2>]]]): switch line wrapping, like the -w option of git-
               shortlog(1).

           •   %<(<N>[,trunc|ltrunc|mtrunc]): make the next placeholder take at least N columns,
               padding spaces on the right if necessary. Optionally truncate at the beginning
               (ltrunc), the middle (mtrunc) or the end (trunc) if the output is longer than N
               columns. Note that truncating only works correctly with N >= 2.

           •   %<|(<N>): make the next placeholder take at least until Nth columns, padding
               spaces on the right if necessary

           •   %>(<N>), %>|(<N>): similar to %<(<N>), %<|(<N>) respectively, but padding spaces
               on the left

           •   %>>(<N>), %>>|(<N>): similar to %>(<N>), %>|(<N>) respectively, except that if the
               next placeholder takes more spaces than given and there are spaces on its left,
               use those spaces

           •   %><(<N>), %><|(<N>): similar to %<(<N>), %<|(<N>) respectively, but padding both
               sides (i.e. the text is centered)

           •   %(trailers[:options]): display the trailers of the body as interpreted by git-
               interpret-trailers(1). The trailers string may be followed by a colon and zero or
               more comma-separated options. If the only option is given, omit non-trailer lines
               from the trailer block. If the unfold option is given, behave as if
               interpret-trailer’s --unfold option was given. E.g., %(trailers:only,unfold) to do
               both.

           Note
           Some placeholders may depend on other options given to the revision traversal engine.
           For example, the %g* reflog options will insert an empty string unless we are
           traversing reflog entries (e.g., by git log -g). The %d and %D placeholders will use
           the "short" decoration format if --decorate was not already provided on the command
           line.

       If you add a + (plus sign) after % of a placeholder, a line-feed is inserted immediately
       before the expansion if and only if the placeholder expands to a non-empty string.

       If you add a - (minus sign) after % of a placeholder, all consecutive line-feeds
       immediately preceding the expansion are deleted if and only if the placeholder expands to
       an empty string.

       If you add a ` ` (space) after % of a placeholder, a space is inserted immediately before
       the expansion if and only if the placeholder expands to a non-empty string.

       •   tformat:

           The tformat: format works exactly like format:, except that it provides "terminator"
           semantics instead of "separator" semantics. In other words, each commit has the
           message terminator character (usually a newline) appended, rather than a separator
           placed between entries. This means that the final entry of a single-line format will
           be properly terminated with a new line, just as the "oneline" format does. For
           example:

               $ git log -2 --pretty=format:%h 4da45bef \
                 | perl -pe '$_ .= " -- NO NEWLINE\n" unless /\n/'
               4da45be
               7134973 -- NO NEWLINE

               $ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef \
                 | perl -pe '$_ .= " -- NO NEWLINE\n" unless /\n/'
               4da45be
               7134973

           In addition, any unrecognized string that has a % in it is interpreted as if it has
           tformat: in front of it. For example, these two are equivalent:

               $ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef
               $ git log -2 --pretty=%h 4da45bef

LIMITING OUTPUT

       If you’re only interested in differences in a subset of files, for example some
       architecture-specific files, you might do:

           git diff-tree -r <tree-ish> <tree-ish> arch/ia64 include/asm-ia64

       and it will only show you what changed in those two directories.

       Or if you are searching for what changed in just kernel/sched.c, just do

           git diff-tree -r <tree-ish> <tree-ish> kernel/sched.c

       and it will ignore all differences to other files.

       The pattern is always the prefix, and is matched exactly. There are no wildcards. Even
       stricter, it has to match a complete path component. I.e. "foo" does not pick up foobar.h.
       "foo" does match foo/bar.h so it can be used to name subdirectories.

       An example of normal usage is:

           torvalds@ppc970:~/git> git diff-tree --abbrev 5319e4
           :100664 100664 ac348b... a01513...    git-fsck-objects.c

       which tells you that the last commit changed just one file (it’s from this one:

           commit 3c6f7ca19ad4043e9e72fa94106f352897e651a8
           tree 5319e4d609cdd282069cc4dce33c1db559539b03
           parent b4e628ea30d5ab3606119d2ea5caeab141d38df7
           author Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> Sat Apr 9 12:02:30 2005
           committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org> Sat Apr 9 12:02:30 2005

           Make "git-fsck-objects" print out all the root commits it finds.

           Once I do the reference tracking, I'll also make it print out all the
           HEAD commits it finds, which is even more interesting.

       in case you care).

RAW OUTPUT FORMAT

       The raw output format from "git-diff-index", "git-diff-tree", "git-diff-files" and "git
       diff --raw" are very similar.

       These commands all compare two sets of things; what is compared differs:

       git-diff-index <tree-ish>
           compares the <tree-ish> and the files on the filesystem.

       git-diff-index --cached <tree-ish>
           compares the <tree-ish> and the index.

       git-diff-tree [-r] <tree-ish-1> <tree-ish-2> [<pattern>...]
           compares the trees named by the two arguments.

       git-diff-files [<pattern>...]
           compares the index and the files on the filesystem.

       The "git-diff-tree" command begins its output by printing the hash of what is being
       compared. After that, all the commands print one output line per changed file.

       An output line is formatted this way:

           in-place edit  :100644 100644 bcd1234... 0123456... M file0
           copy-edit      :100644 100644 abcd123... 1234567... C68 file1 file2
           rename-edit    :100644 100644 abcd123... 1234567... R86 file1 file3
           create         :000000 100644 0000000... 1234567... A file4
           delete         :100644 000000 1234567... 0000000... D file5
           unmerged       :000000 000000 0000000... 0000000... U file6

       That is, from the left to the right:

        1. a colon.

        2. mode for "src"; 000000 if creation or unmerged.

        3. a space.

        4. mode for "dst"; 000000 if deletion or unmerged.

        5. a space.

        6. sha1 for "src"; 0{40} if creation or unmerged.

        7. a space.

        8. sha1 for "dst"; 0{40} if creation, unmerged or "look at work tree".

        9. a space.

       10. status, followed by optional "score" number.

       11. a tab or a NUL when -z option is used.

       12. path for "src"

       13. a tab or a NUL when -z option is used; only exists for C or R.

       14. path for "dst"; only exists for C or R.

       15. an LF or a NUL when -z option is used, to terminate the record.

       Possible status letters are:

       •   A: addition of a file

       •   C: copy of a file into a new one

       •   D: deletion of a file

       •   M: modification of the contents or mode of a file

       •   R: renaming of a file

       •   T: change in the type of the file

       •   U: file is unmerged (you must complete the merge before it can be committed)

       •   X: "unknown" change type (most probably a bug, please report it)

       Status letters C and R are always followed by a score (denoting the percentage of
       similarity between the source and target of the move or copy). Status letter M may be
       followed by a score (denoting the percentage of dissimilarity) for file rewrites.

       <sha1> is shown as all 0’s if a file is new on the filesystem and it is out of sync with
       the index.

       Example:

           :100644 100644 5be4a4...... 000000...... M file.c

       Without the -z option, pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted as explained for the
       configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)). Using -z the filename is output
       verbatim and the line is terminated by a NUL byte.

DIFF FORMAT FOR MERGES

       "git-diff-tree", "git-diff-files" and "git-diff --raw" can take -c or --cc option to
       generate diff output also for merge commits. The output differs from the format described
       above in the following way:

        1. there is a colon for each parent

        2. there are more "src" modes and "src" sha1

        3. status is concatenated status characters for each parent

        4. no optional "score" number

        5. single path, only for "dst"

       Example:

           ::100644 100644 100644 fabadb8... cc95eb0... 4866510... MM      describe.c

       Note that combined diff lists only files which were modified from all parents.

GENERATING PATCHES WITH -P

       When "git-diff-index", "git-diff-tree", or "git-diff-files" are run with a -p option, "git
       diff" without the --raw option, or "git log" with the "-p" option, they do not produce the
       output described above; instead they produce a patch file. You can customize the creation
       of such patches via the GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF and the GIT_DIFF_OPTS environment variables.

       What the -p option produces is slightly different from the traditional diff format:

        1. It is preceded with a "git diff" header that looks like this:

               diff --git a/file1 b/file2

           The a/ and b/ filenames are the same unless rename/copy is involved. Especially, even
           for a creation or a deletion, /dev/null is not used in place of the a/ or b/
           filenames.

           When rename/copy is involved, file1 and file2 show the name of the source file of the
           rename/copy and the name of the file that rename/copy produces, respectively.

        2. It is followed by one or more extended header lines:

               old mode <mode>
               new mode <mode>
               deleted file mode <mode>
               new file mode <mode>
               copy from <path>
               copy to <path>
               rename from <path>
               rename to <path>
               similarity index <number>
               dissimilarity index <number>
               index <hash>..<hash> <mode>

           File modes are printed as 6-digit octal numbers including the file type and file
           permission bits.

           Path names in extended headers do not include the a/ and b/ prefixes.

           The similarity index is the percentage of unchanged lines, and the dissimilarity index
           is the percentage of changed lines. It is a rounded down integer, followed by a
           percent sign. The similarity index value of 100% is thus reserved for two equal files,
           while 100% dissimilarity means that no line from the old file made it into the new
           one.

           The index line includes the SHA-1 checksum before and after the change. The <mode> is
           included if the file mode does not change; otherwise, separate lines indicate the old
           and the new mode.

        3. Pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted as explained for the configuration
           variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)).

        4. All the file1 files in the output refer to files before the commit, and all the file2
           files refer to files after the commit. It is incorrect to apply each change to each
           file sequentially. For example, this patch will swap a and b:

               diff --git a/a b/b
               rename from a
               rename to b
               diff --git a/b b/a
               rename from b
               rename to a

COMBINED DIFF FORMAT

       Any diff-generating command can take the -c or --cc option to produce a combined diff when
       showing a merge. This is the default format when showing merges with git-diff(1) or git-
       show(1). Note also that you can give the -m option to any of these commands to force
       generation of diffs with individual parents of a merge.

       A combined diff format looks like this:

           diff --combined describe.c
           index fabadb8,cc95eb0..4866510
           --- a/describe.c
           +++ b/describe.c
           @@@ -98,20 -98,12 +98,20 @@@
                   return (a_date > b_date) ? -1 : (a_date == b_date) ? 0 : 1;
             }

           - static void describe(char *arg)
            -static void describe(struct commit *cmit, int last_one)
           ++static void describe(char *arg, int last_one)
             {
            +      unsigned char sha1[20];
            +      struct commit *cmit;
                   struct commit_list *list;
                   static int initialized = 0;
                   struct commit_name *n;

            +      if (get_sha1(arg, sha1) < 0)
            +              usage(describe_usage);
            +      cmit = lookup_commit_reference(sha1);
            +      if (!cmit)
            +              usage(describe_usage);
            +
                   if (!initialized) {
                           initialized = 1;
                           for_each_ref(get_name);

        1. It is preceded with a "git diff" header, that looks like this (when -c option is
           used):

               diff --combined file

           or like this (when --cc option is used):

               diff --cc file

        2. It is followed by one or more extended header lines (this example shows a merge with
           two parents):

               index <hash>,<hash>..<hash>
               mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode>
               new file mode <mode>
               deleted file mode <mode>,<mode>

           The mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode> line appears only if at least one of the <mode> is
           different from the rest. Extended headers with information about detected contents
           movement (renames and copying detection) are designed to work with diff of two
           <tree-ish> and are not used by combined diff format.

        3. It is followed by two-line from-file/to-file header

               --- a/file
               +++ b/file

           Similar to two-line header for traditional unified diff format, /dev/null is used to
           signal created or deleted files.

        4. Chunk header format is modified to prevent people from accidentally feeding it to
           patch -p1. Combined diff format was created for review of merge commit changes, and
           was not meant for apply. The change is similar to the change in the extended index
           header:

               @@@ <from-file-range> <from-file-range> <to-file-range> @@@

           There are (number of parents + 1) @ characters in the chunk header for combined diff
           format.

       Unlike the traditional unified diff format, which shows two files A and B with a single
       column that has - (minus — appears in A but removed in B), + (plus — missing in A but
       added to B), or " " (space — unchanged) prefix, this format compares two or more files
       file1, file2,... with one file X, and shows how X differs from each of fileN. One column
       for each of fileN is prepended to the output line to note how X’s line is different from
       it.

       A - character in the column N means that the line appears in fileN but it does not appear
       in the result. A + character in the column N means that the line appears in the result,
       and fileN does not have that line (in other words, the line was added, from the point of
       view of that parent).

       In the above example output, the function signature was changed from both files (hence two
       - removals from both file1 and file2, plus ++ to mean one line that was added does not
       appear in either file1 or file2). Also eight other lines are the same from file1 but do
       not appear in file2 (hence prefixed with +).

       When shown by git diff-tree -c, it compares the parents of a merge commit with the merge
       result (i.e. file1..fileN are the parents). When shown by git diff-files -c, it compares
       the two unresolved merge parents with the working tree file (i.e. file1 is stage 2 aka
       "our version", file2 is stage 3 aka "their version").

OTHER DIFF FORMATS

       The --summary option describes newly added, deleted, renamed and copied files. The --stat
       option adds diffstat(1) graph to the output. These options can be combined with other
       options, such as -p, and are meant for human consumption.

       When showing a change that involves a rename or a copy, --stat output formats the
       pathnames compactly by combining common prefix and suffix of the pathnames. For example, a
       change that moves arch/i386/Makefile to arch/x86/Makefile while modifying 4 lines will be
       shown like this:

           arch/{i386 => x86}/Makefile    |   4 +--

       The --numstat option gives the diffstat(1) information but is designed for easier machine
       consumption. An entry in --numstat output looks like this:

           1       2       README
           3       1       arch/{i386 => x86}/Makefile

       That is, from left to right:

        1. the number of added lines;

        2. a tab;

        3. the number of deleted lines;

        4. a tab;

        5. pathname (possibly with rename/copy information);

        6. a newline.

       When -z output option is in effect, the output is formatted this way:

           1       2       README NUL
           3       1       NUL arch/i386/Makefile NUL arch/x86/Makefile NUL

       That is:

        1. the number of added lines;

        2. a tab;

        3. the number of deleted lines;

        4. a tab;

        5. a NUL (only exists if renamed/copied);

        6. pathname in preimage;

        7. a NUL (only exists if renamed/copied);

        8. pathname in postimage (only exists if renamed/copied);

        9. a NUL.

       The extra NUL before the preimage path in renamed case is to allow scripts that read the
       output to tell if the current record being read is a single-path record or a rename/copy
       record without reading ahead. After reading added and deleted lines, reading up to NUL
       would yield the pathname, but if that is NUL, the record will show two paths.

GIT

       Part of the git(1) suite