Git - easiest way to see diff with previous version if I have the sha

Question

A colleague of mine checked in some changes to Git, and I want to see exactly what those changes were. In other words, the diff between his check-in and its parent.

What seemed logical to me was to run this command:

git diff shaOfHisCheckIn

But this didn't work. It appears to show the diff between that SHA and my current working copy.

What's the correct command to show the diff between a given SHA and its parent?

Solution 1

git show is your friend:

git show shaOfHisCheckIn

Solution 2

If you want to view the diff visually in kdiff3, meld, kompare, xxdiff, tkdiff, diffuse…

git difftool --dir-diff shaOfHisCheckIn^!

git difftool --tool=meld --dir-diff shaOfHisCheckIn^!

git difftool -t meld -d shaOfHisCheckIn^!

Solution 3

Try this:

git diff shaOfHisCheckIn^ shaOfHisCheckIn

or

git diff shaOfHisCheckIn{^,}

Solution 4

git diff shaOfHisCheckIn shaOfHisCheckIn^

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Comments

[andriy]

Thanks, that's exactly what I need, and it's easy to remember and to type.

[Simon Whitaker]

You're welcome! It works for tags too by the way (git show <tag>) - it's a really useful command.

[Peter Mortensen]

Isn't Vinoth Gopi's answer more appropriate (the order)?