Cfrgtkky

you can simply pass the 2 commits to git diff like :

-> git diff 0da94be  59ff30c > my.patch

-> git apply my.patch

Asking for the difference /between/ two commits without including the commits in-between makes little sense. Commits are just snapshots of the contents of the repository; asking for the difference between two necessarily includes them. So the question then is, what are you really looking for?

As William suggested, cherry-picking can give you the delta of a single commit rebased on top of another. That is:

$ git checkout 012345

$ git cherry-pick -n abcdef

$ git diff --cached

This takes commit 'abcdef', compares it to its immediate ancestor, then applies that difference on top of '012345'. This new difference is then shown - the only change is the context comes from '012345' rather than 'abcdef's immediate ancestor. Of course, you may get conflicts and etc, so it's not a very useful process in most cases.

If you're just interested in abcdef itself, you can do:

$ git log -u -1 abcdef

This compares abcdef to its immediate ancestor, alone, and is usually what you want.

And of course

$ git diff 012345..abcdef

gives you all differences between those two commits.

It would help to get a better idea of what you're trying to achieve - as I mentioned, asking for the difference between two commits without what's in between doesn't actually make sense.

To compare two git commits 12345 and abcdef as patches one can use the diff command as

diff <(git show 123456) <(git show abcdef)

git diff <a-commit> <another-commit> path

Example:

git diff commit1 commit2 config/routes.rb

It shows the difference on that file between those commits.

Let's say you have this

A

|

B    A0

|    |

C    D

   /

  |

 ...

And you want to make sure that A is the same as A0.

This will do the trick:

$ git diff B A > B-A.diff

$ git diff D A0 > D-A0.diff

$ diff B-A.diff D-A0.diff

Suppose you want to see the difference between commits 012345 and abcdef. The following should do what you want:

$ git checkout 012345

$ git cherry-pick -n abcdef

$ git diff --cached

What about this:

git diff abcdef 123456 | less

It's handy to just pipe it to less if you want to compare many different diffs on the fly.

My alias settings in ~/.bashrc file for git diff:

alias gdca='git diff --cached' # diff between your staged file and the last commit

alias gdcc='git diff HEAD{,^}' # diff between your recent tow commits

English is not my native language, please excuse typing errors

I wrote a script which displays diff between two commits, works well on Ubuntu.

https://gist.github.com/jacobabrahamb4/a60624d6274ece7a0bd2d141b53407bc

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys, subprocess, os



TOOLS = ['bcompare', 'meld']



def getTool():

    for tool in TOOLS:

        try:

            out = subprocess.check_output(['which', tool]).strip()

            if tool in out:

                return tool

        except subprocess.CalledProcessError:

            pass

    return None



def printUsageAndExit():

    print 'Usage: python bdiff.py <project> <commit_one> <commit_two>'

    print 'Example: python bdiff.py <project> 0 1'

    print 'Example: python bdiff.py <project> fhejk7fe d78ewg9we'

    print 'Example: python bdiff.py <project> 0 d78ewg9we'

    sys.exit(0)



def getCommitIds(name, first, second):

    commit1 = None

    commit2 = None

    try:

        first_index = int(first) - 1

        second_index = int(second) - 1

        if int(first) < 0 or int(second) < 0:

            print "Cannot handle negative values: "

            sys.exit(0)

        logs = subprocess.check_output(['git', '-C', name, 'log', '--oneline', '--reverse']).split('n')

        if first_index >= 0:

            commit1 = logs[first_index].split(' ')[0]

        if second_index >= 0:

            commit2 = logs[second_index].split(' ')[0]

    except ValueError:

        if first != '0':

            commit1 = first

        if second != '0':

            commit2 = second

    return commit1, commit2



def validateCommitIds(name, commit1, commit2):

    if commit1 == None and commit2 == None:

        print "Nothing to do, exit!"

        return False

    try:

        if commit1 != None:

            subprocess.check_output(['git', '-C', name, 'cat-file', '-t', commit1]).strip()

        if commit2 != None:

            subprocess.check_output(['git', '-C', name, 'cat-file', '-t', commit2]).strip()

    except subprocess.CalledProcessError:

        return False

    return True



def cleanup(commit1, commit2):

        subprocess.check_output(['rm', '-rf', '/tmp/'+(commit1 if commit1 != None else '0'), '/tmp/'+(commit2 if commit2 != None else '0')])



def checkoutCommit(name, commit):

    if commit != None:

        subprocess.check_output(['git', 'clone', name, '/tmp/'+commit])

        subprocess.check_output(['git', '-C', '/tmp/'+commit, 'checkout', commit])

    else:

        subprocess.check_output(['mkdir', '/tmp/0'])



def compare(tool, commit1, commit2):

        subprocess.check_output([tool, '/tmp/'+(commit1 if commit1 != None else '0'), '/tmp/'+(commit2 if commit2 != None else '0')])



if __name__=='__main__':

    tool = getTool()

    if tool == None:

        print "No GUI diff tools"

        sys.exit(0)

    if len(sys.argv) != 4:

        printUsageAndExit()



    name, first, second = None, 0, 0

    try:

        name, first, second = sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2], sys.argv[3]

    except IndexError:

        printUsageAndExit()



    commit1, commit2 = getCommitIds(name, first, second)



    if not validateCommitIds(name, commit1, commit2):

        sys.exit(0)



    cleanup(commit1, commit2)

    checkoutCommit(name, commit1)

    checkoutCommit(name, commit2)



    try:

        compare(tool, commit1, commit2)

    except KeyboardInterrupt:

        pass

    finally:

        cleanup(commit1, commit2)

    sys.exit(0)

Since Git 2.19, you can simply use:

git range-diff <rev1>...<rev2>