Diff with all the options 🥳

The fun starts with adding options. I suspect this one might be easier to practice when you have real life diffs to look into in a real life project, but try to take a few of them for a spin and perhaps that means you remember them next time you have a messy situation to diff.

• Make a good handful of changes in different files
• Try these different options before you stage or commit
• Stage some changes, commit others, and try out the options again

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Show me unstaged changes:

git diff

This basic command without any options will quickly show me way too much info, or too little if I have started to commit. I find it’s when I start adding options that it becomes helpful.

Show me changes compared to the main branch (both commits and unstaged changes):

git diff main

Show me changes for a specific file or directory:

git diff filename.js
git diff src

Give me just an overview:

git diff --stat

Show me the diff but without a specific file:

git diff ':!package-lock.json'

I have staged many changes in many files, give me a quick overview:

git diff --staged --stat

There are so many more! Can you find any that look interesting?

git diff -h