Re: [Q] Comparing differences introduced by two commits?

[Jonathan del Strother <maillist@steelskies.com>]

On 22 August 2012 13:10, Brian Foster <brian.foster@maxim-ic.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
>  I have two commits A and B.  They are on separate branches.
>  Commit A is a older version of B.  I want to see what, if
>  any, differences there are between what commit A changes
>  and what commit B changes.  (The relative positions of
>  two commits may also differ in the two branches; that is,
>  there may have been some commit re-ordering.)
>
>  Ideally, the contents of the commit-message are also taken
>  into account (albeit things like the commit-Id, dates, and
>  so on will differ and therefore should be ignored).
>
>  I realize the history leading up to each commit can itself
>  cause what the commits change to differ, even if the "net
>  result" of the two commits is the same.  For my purposes,
>  this is a noise issue, and I'm happy to consider A and B
>  as not causing the same changes (i.e., as being different),
>  albeit if the only difference is the line numbers, then it
>  would be nice to ignore that.
>
>  In the past I've done:
>
>     diff <(git show A) <(git show B)
>
>  which produces rather messy output but is Ok when dealing
>  with just one or two sets of A/B commits.  I now have a
>  large-ist set of A/B commits, and the above is impractical.
>
>  Some searching hasn't found any suggestions I'm too happy
>  with, albeit I've very possibly overlooked something.

What about cherry picking B onto A, then showing the cherry-picked commit?

Off the top of my head :

git checkout A
git cherry-pick B
git show HEAD

-Jonathan