I’ve been using range-diff for a while now, but I’d been stuck with a long input method for arguments. Today I learned a shortcut.

Primer

Recall that git range-diff looks at the differences between two ranges: commonly, we pass the two ranges explicitly; or, we can pass a base and two tips to have the same effect as <base>..<tip1> <base>..<tip2>. The manual explaining this notation gives the following example: “after rebasing a branch my-topic, git range-diff my-topic@{u} my-topic@{1} my-topic would show the differences introduced by the rebase.” So I’ve been writing

g range-diff @{u} @{1} @

and similar variants for several months. I actually recently switched to push.default = current where my @{upstream} is the branch I want to pull from (often some version of origin/main or upstream/main) and Git provides (after I push) @{push} as the branch I’m pushing to (e.g., origin/topic). With this layout, I run

g range-diff @{u} @{push} @

(There is no abbreviation for @{push}, sadly.)

Symmetric diff

Now, I knew that git range-diff also accepts a three-dot symmetric difference notation, so

g range-diff <left>...<right>
    -- becomes -->
g range-diff <right>..<left> <left>..<right>

But in the past, especially prior to push.default = current, I had not found this terribly useful. I was probably holding it wrong.

Today, I write (before pushing)

g range-diff @{push}... | copy-range-diff

and all is well. Use git log [--oneline] --graph --boundary --left-right --cherry-mark @{push}... to get a feel for what ranges are being compared.

Categories: Blog