Is there a way to check the difference between the working directory in my current branch against the working directory of another branch in a specific file? For example, if I'm working in branch A on file 1, I want to compare the difference with file 1 on branch B.
Asked
Active
Viewed 3.8k times
40
-
2Possible duplicate of [How to compare files from two different branches?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4099742/how-to-compare-files-from-two-different-branches) – faintsignal Feb 26 '19 at 16:27
3 Answers
71
Use the git diff branch branch filename syntax:
git diff branchA branchB -- file.cs
put the two names of your branches and optionally use the -- filename
option to specify one file! Good luck, let me know if you have issues.

Patrick Murphy
- 2,311
- 14
- 17
-
6I don't think you need the `--` portion, and you can diff more than one file or directory this way. If you don't pass anything, it shows the entire branch diff. `git diff branchA branchB` - diff between branches on entire repo `git diff branchA branchB file.cs` - diff on that 1 file `git diff branchA branchB some/path/in/rep some/other/path` - diffs two directories – PRS Oct 06 '17 at 06:29
21
The following will help if you want to compare different files in two branches
git diff develop:foo.txt master:bar.txt

arulraj.net
- 4,579
- 3
- 36
- 37
-
This was helpful: I needed to compare files that had moved around in the linux source. `git diff linux-v4.1.10:sound/soc/davinci/davinci-mcasp.c linux-5.4.y:sound/soc/ti/davinci-mcasp.c` did the trick. – Robert Calhoun Oct 02 '20 at 03:09
10
Say you're on one branch, called legacy
, and want to compare the file build.gradle
to the same version on the master
branch:
git diff master build.gradle

Don Branson
- 13,631
- 10
- 59
- 101