CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitdiff
Senthil Kumaran
Senthil Kumaran

Reputation: 56931

What is git diff origin master supposed to do?

From a git branch, a colleague of mine ran 

git diff origin master

What is it supposed supposed to do? What does origin separately point to?

This is related, but not covered in In Git, what is the difference between origin/master vs origin master?

Upvotes: 11

Views: 35841

Answers (5)

torek
torek

Reputation: 489065

This form of git diff just takes two revision specifiers, as described in gitrevisions.

In this case origin is most likely to match item 6:

  1. otherwise, refs/remotes/<refname>/HEAD if it exists.

So this means the same as git diff origin/HEAD master: resolve origin/HEAD to a commit-ID, resolve master to a commit-ID, and diff the two commits.

Run:

git rev-parse origin

to see how the resolution works.

Upvotes: 6

Amos Folarin
Amos Folarin

Reputation: 2179

"origin" points to the "remote", typically where you cloned the repository from, see 

$ git remote -v show

But specifically in answer to your question "git diff origin master" is equiv. to this: 

$ git diff origin/HEAD master

origin/HEAD to the branch pointed to by HEAD reference on the remote. Which was the checked out branch at last pull.

Take a look at your commit graph, which will show you where all your references are (--decorate)

$ git log --oneline --graph --all --decorate

Upvotes: 3

David
David

Reputation: 3055

It shows the changes between the tips of origin/HEAD and the master branches. You can achieve the same with following commands:

  • git diff origin/HEAD master
  • git diff origin/HEAD..master

Usually origin points to the source from where you cloned your repository.

Upvotes: 2

vonbrand
vonbrand

Reputation: 11831

It depends... if origin and master are branches, it shows the difference between them. When looking over explanations, they usually use origin to stand for the original (upstream, official, whatever) branch, and master for the branch you are working on. I.e., "show me what changed with respect to the original version."

Upvotes: 1

Jan Hudec
Jan Hudec

Reputation: 76316

It is equivalent to

git diff origin/HEAD master

Upvotes: 2

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