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When I do git diff COMMIT I see the changes between that commit and HEAD (afaik) but I would like to see the changes that were made by that single commit.

I haven't found any obvious options on diff/log that will give me that output.

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2  
possible duplicate of Shorthand for diff of git commit with its parent? – Chris Maes Mar 10 '15 at 15:54

12 Answers 12

up vote 760 down vote accepted

To see the diff for a particular COMMIT hash:

git diff COMMIT^ COMMIT will show you the difference between that COMMIT's ancestor and the COMMIT. See the man pages for git diff for details about the command and gitrevisions about the ^ notation and its friends.

Alternatively, git show COMMIT will do something very similar. (The commit's data, including its diff.) See the git show manpage.

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9  
Note that the ^ needs to be quoted in the Thomson and Bourne shells (synonym for | there) and rc and its derivatives (caret operator) and in zsh with extendedglob enabled (not globbing operator) – Stephane Chazelas Mar 24 '14 at 14:34
1  
This doesnt work anymore. git diff HEAD^ HEAD doesn't show anything. – user3690202 Jun 7 '15 at 17:16
8  
git diff COMMIT~ COMMIT works for me, notice the tilde instead of caret. I'm running git version 2.6.1.windows.1 on Windows 10. – Juuso Ohtonen Nov 24 '15 at 10:58
5  
@tradetree: the word COMMIT is supposed to be replaced with the name of some commit, e.g. the SHA sum. – Kundor May 12 '16 at 19:00
11  
I feel like git show is more appropriate for this question and should be the suggestion mentioned first. – pypmannetjies Oct 12 '16 at 12:00
up vote 244 down vote

As mentioned in "Shorthand for diff of git commit with its parent?", you can also use git diff with:

git diff COMMIT^!

or

git diff-tree -p COMMIT

With git show, you would need (in order to focus on diff alone) to do:

git show --color --pretty=format:%b $COMMIT

The COMMIT parameter is a commit-ish:

A commit object or an object that can be recursively dereferenced to a commit object. The following are all commit-ishes: a commit object, a tag object that points to a commit object, a tag object that points to a tag object that points to a commit object, etc.

See gitrevision "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" to reference a commit-ish.
See also "What does tree-ish mean in Git?".

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16  
Thanks for mentioning the handy shortcut using bang! That's exactly what I came to this thread looking for. – patrickvacek Feb 3 '14 at 15:54
1  
git diff-tree -p COMMIT worked for me. Others didn't work. Thanks – Radian Nov 5 '14 at 9:12
    
instead of COMMIT I can type SHA? Anything else? – Honey Sep 1 '16 at 9:44
1  
@hon yes, it is called a tree-ish. I am on my phone, I will edit this answer in a bit. – VonC Sep 1 '16 at 9:51
1  
@Honey Actually, the exact term is commit-ish. I have edited my answer, with link to the official documentation defining this specific category. – VonC Sep 1 '16 at 11:01
up vote 37 down vote

You can also try this in easy way :

git show <COMMIT>
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That's already been said in the accepted answer. – GKFX Jul 15 '16 at 14:11
1  
@GKFX : Dear sometimes person don't want to read 2 to 3 line. – Lakhan Jul 15 '16 at 19:05
4  
This should be the accepted answer IMHO. Simple and exactly what I was looking for. – mercurial Jan 3 at 14:46
up vote 16 down vote

git show shows the changes made in the most recent commit.

Equivalent to git show HEAD.

git show HEAD~1 takes you back 1 commit.

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up vote 14 down vote

From the man page for git-diff(1):

git diff [options] [<commit>] [--] [<path>…]
git diff [options] --cached [<commit>] [--] [<path>…]
git diff [options] <commit> <commit> [--] [<path>…]
git diff [options] <blob> <blob>
git diff [options] [--no-index] [--] <path> <path>

Use the 3rd one in the middle:

git diff [options] <parent-commit> <commit>

Also from the same man page, at the bottom, in the Examples section:

$ git diff HEAD^ HEAD      <3>

Compare the version before the last commit and the last commit.

Admittedly it's worded a little confusingly, it would be less confusing as

Compare the most recent commit with the commit before it.

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3  
Your rewording would apply to git diff HEAD HEAD^. – Richard Jun 26 '14 at 15:56
    
git diff HEAD^ HEAD doesn't display any changes. – user3690202 Jun 7 '15 at 17:16
    
@user3690202 so that implies that there aren't any changes to display. Is that actually the case? – user456814 Jun 8 '15 at 2:39
    
How can there not be any changes to display? If you want to view the last commit, surely unless it is a completely new repository there will be some changes to display? – user3690202 Jun 9 '15 at 19:06
    
@user3690202 it's possible to make an "empty commit" with Git that doesn't actually contain any changes from the parent, although there is a built-in safeguard that checks for and prevents this, though it is overridable with a command line option. I doubt that you would intentionally create an empty commit, so another possibility is that you somehow have pre-commit line-ending conversion on (or other funny whitespace stuff) that is tricking Git into thinking that no changes have actually been made. What platform are you running Git on? – user456814 Jun 10 '15 at 0:21
up vote 14 down vote

this seems to do the job; i use it to show what has been brought in by a merge.

    git whatchanged -m -n 1 -p <sha of merge commit>
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Would that work too with git log? (because of stackoverflow.com/a/18585297/6309) – VonC Oct 14 '14 at 17:52
up vote 9 down vote

Another possibility:

git log -p COMMIT -1

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also git show COMMIT gives the same output – Grant McLean Feb 24 '16 at 9:16
1  
@GrantMcLean Yes, and it is already in the highest upvoted answer, so I do not mention it. – John_West Feb 24 '16 at 13:40
up vote 7 down vote 
git difftool COMMIT^ <commit hash>

is also possible if you have configured your difftool.

See here how to configure difftool Or the manual page here

Additionally you can use git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r <commit hash> to see which files been changed/committed in a give commit hash

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up vote 4 down vote

To see author and time by commit use git show COMMIT. Which will result in something like this:

commit 13414df70354678b1b9304ebe4b6d204810f867e
Merge: a2a2894 3a1ba8f
Author: You <you@you.com>
Date:   Fri Jul 24 17:46:42 2015 -0700

     Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/your-feature'

If you want to see which files had been changed, run the following with the values from the Merge line above git diff --stat a2a2894 3a1ba8f.

If you want to see the actual diff, run git --stat a2a2894 3a1ba8f

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up vote 2 down vote

you could use git diff HEAD HEAD^1 to see the diff with the parent commit.

if you only wanna see the list of files, add the option --stat into it.

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up vote 1 down vote

this command will get you the git parent commit-hash 

git log -n 2 <commit-hash>

after that git diff-tool <commit-hash> <parent-commit-hash>

Ex: 

bonnie@bonnie ~/ $ git log -n 2 7f65b9a9d3820525766fcba285b3c678e889fe3

commit 7f65b9a9d3820525766fcba285b3c678e889fe3b
Author: souparno <souparno.majumder@gmail.com> 
Date:   Mon Jul 25 13:17:07 2016 +0530

css changed to maintain the aspect ratio of the channel logos and to fit them properly

commit c3a61f17e14e2b80cf64b172a45f1b4826ee291f
Author: souparno <souparno.majumder@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon Jul 25 11:28:09 2016 +0530

the ratio of the height to width of the channel images are maintained

after this 

git difftool 7f65b9a9d3820525766fcba285b3c678e889fe3b c3a61f17e14e2b80cf64b172a45f1b4826ee291f
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up vote 1 down vote

I'm running git version 2.6.1.windows.1 on Windows 10, so I needed a slight modification to Nevik's answer (tilde instead of caret):

git diff COMMIT~ COMMIT

Other option is to quote the caret:

git diff "COMMIT^" COMMIT
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