How to ask git if and where given deleted hunk lives now?

Question

When merging, I often have modified code that is now "deleted". However it may have been moved somewhere else. How can I find out where?

Example: I change one line in a function foo defined in file A. Next, I merge with tree that this function is now moved to file B (and possibly also changed one line). In A the conflict markers say "this hunk was deleted".

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Could you show an example? – Schwern Sep 27 '16 at 21:40

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 27 '16 at 22:44

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Assuming your branch is mybranch and the main tree is master, you could do git diff mybranch...master. This will show you all changes between the two branches using their nearest common ancestor commit as a reference point.

In the diff, you can search for your file to see what happened to it.

For more details see git help diff.

answered Sep 27 '16 at 22:44

Yawar

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Rather crude, but I must admit it does the job. – sevo Sep 27 '16 at 22:57
@sevo - heh, that's a pretty good description of git in general. – Yawar Sep 27 '16 at 23:08

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 27 '16 at 21:54

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There's a number of visual diff and merge tools which provide better visualization of diffs. These generally can show when a hunk of code was moved rather than deleted.

You use them with git difftool and this must be configured with which tool to use. There's a wide variety available. Here's an example using Meld.

answered Sep 27 '16 at 21:54

Schwern

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I think OP is looking for inter-file moves, rather than intra-file. – clstrfsck Sep 27 '16 at 22:12

How to ask git if and where given deleted hunk lives now?

2 Answers2