How can I see the changes in a Git commit?

To see the diff for a particular COMMIT hash, where COMMIT is the hash of the commit:

git diff COMMIT~ COMMIT will show you the difference between that COMMIT's ancestor and the COMMIT. See the man pages for git diff for details about the command and gitrevisions about the ~ notation and its friends.

Alternatively, git show COMMIT will do something very similar. (The commit's data, including its diff - but not for merge commits.) See the git show manpage.

(also git diff COMMIT will show you the difference between that COMMIT and the head.)

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As mentioned in "Shorthand for diff of git commit with its parent?", you can also use git diff with:

git diff COMMIT^!

or

git diff-tree -p COMMIT

With git show, you would need (in order to focus on diff alone) to do:

git show --color --pretty=format:%b COMMIT

The COMMIT parameter is a commit-ish:

A commit object or an object that can be recursively dereferenced to a commit object. The following are all commit-ishes: a commit object, a tag object that points to a commit object, a tag object that points to a tag object that points to a commit object, etc.

See gitrevision "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" to reference a commit-ish.
See also "What does tree-ish mean in Git?".

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You can also try this easy way:

git show <COMMIT>

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git show shows the changes made in the most recent commit. It is equivalent to git show HEAD.

git show HEAD~1 takes you back one commit.

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I usually do:

git diff HEAD~1

To show the changes regarding the last commit. If you have more commits just increase the number 1 to how many commits diff you want to see.

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Use:

git show <commit_sha>

This will show you just what's in that commit. You can do a range by just putting a space between the two commit SHA-1 hashes.

git show <beginning_sha> <ending_sha>

which is pretty helpful if you're rebasing often because your feature logs will all be in a row.

If you happen to want to look at the last 3 commits you can use the HEAD syntax

git show HEAD~3 HEAD

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First get the commit ID using,

git log #to list all

Or

git log -p -1 #last one commit id

Copy commit id.

Now we use two methods to list changes from a specific commit,

Method 1:

git diff commit_id^! #commit id something like this 1c6a6000asad012

Method 2:

git show commit_id
For example: git show 1c6a600a

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From the man page for git-diff(1):

git diff [options] [<commit>] [--] [<path>…]
git diff [options] --cached [<commit>] [--] [<path>…]
git diff [options] <commit> <commit> [--] [<path>…]
git diff [options] <blob> <blob>
git diff [options] [--no-index] [--] <path> <path>

Use the 3rd one in the middle:

git diff [options] <parent-commit> <commit>

Also from the same man page, at the bottom, in the Examples section:

$ git diff HEAD^ HEAD      <3>

Compare the version before the last commit and the last commit.

Admittedly it's worded a little confusingly, it would be less confusing as

Compare the most recent commit with the commit before it.

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For me this works just fine

git show COMMIT --compact-summary

Which shows the next information

Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as file creations or deletions ("new" or "gone", optionally "+l" if it’s a symlink) and mode changes ("+x" or "-x" for adding or removing executable bit respectively) in diffstat. The information is put between the filename part and the graph part. Implies --stat.

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The following seems to do the job; I use it to show what has been brought in by a merge.

git whatchanged -m -n 1 -p <SHA-1 hash of merge commit>

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Another possibility:

git log -p COMMIT -1

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I like the below command to compare a specific commit and its last commit:

git diff <commit-hash>^-

Example:

git diff cd1b3f485^-

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You could use git diff HEAD HEAD^1 to see the diff with the parent commit.

If you only want to see the list of files, add the --stat option.

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git difftool COMMIT^ <commit hash>

is also possible if you have configured your difftool.

See here how to configure difftool. Or the manual page here.

Additionally, you can use git diff-tree --no-commit-id --name-only -r <commit hash> to see which files been changed/committed in a give commit hash.

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To see author and time by commit, use git show COMMIT. Which will result in something like this:

commit 13414df70354678b1b9304ebe4b6d204810f867e
Merge: a2a2894 3a1ba8f
Author: You <you@you.com>
Date:   Fri Jul 24 17:46:42 2015 -0700

     Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/your-feature'

If you want to see which files had been changed, run the following with the values from the Merge line above, git diff --stat a2a2894 3a1ba8f.

If you want to see the actual diff, run git --stat a2a2894 3a1ba8f.

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For checking complete changes:

  git diff <commit_Id_1> <commit_Id_2>

For checking only the changed/added/deleted files:

  git diff <commit_Id_1> <commit_Id_2> --name-only

NOTE: For checking diff without commit in between, you don't need to put the commit ids.

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If you just want to see the changes in the latest commit, simply git show will give you that.

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The following code will show the current commit

git show HEAD

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This command will get you the Git parent commit-hash:

git log -n 2 <commit-hash>

After that git diff-tool <commit-hash> <parent-commit-hash>

Example:

bonnie@bonnie ~/ $ git log -n 2 7f65b9a9d3820525766fcba285b3c678e889fe3

commit 7f65b9a9d3820525766fcba285b3c678e889fe3b
Author: souparno <souparno.majumder@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon Jul 25 13:17:07 2016 +0530

CSS changed to maintain the aspect ratio of the channel logos and to fit them properly.

commit c3a61f17e14e2b80cf64b172a45f1b4826ee291f
Author: souparno <souparno.majumder@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon Jul 25 11:28:09 2016 +0530

The ratio of the height to width of the channel images are maintained.

After this

git difftool 7f65b9a9d3820525766fcba285b3c678e889fe3b c3a61f17e14e2b80cf64b172a45f1b4826ee291f

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I'm running Git version 2.6.1.windows.1 on Windows 10, so I needed a slight modification to Nevik's answer (tilde instead of caret):

git diff COMMIT~ COMMIT

Another option is to quote the caret:

git diff "COMMIT^" COMMIT

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It is also possible to review changes between two commits for a specific file.

git diff <commit_Id_1> <commit_Id_2> some_dir/file.txt

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A few answers miss a special case. How to view changes made by the Root Commit as it does not have a parent/ancestor.

Both

git diff <root_commit>^..<root_commit>

and

git diff <root_commit>~..<root_commit>

throw an error.

$git diff 27e521ca73a46b2d3a28568dc49fced81e46aaea~ 27e521ca73a46b2d3a28568dc49fced81e46aaea
fatal: ambiguous argument '27e521ca73a46b2d3a28568dc49fced81e46aaea~': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
Use '--' to separate paths from revisions, like this:
'git <command> [<revision>...] -- [<file>...]'

git diff <root_commit>^!

shows diff btw root commit and HEAD. Like so:

$ git diff 27e521ca73a46b2d3a28568dc49fced81e46aaea^!
diff --git a/file1.txt b/file1.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..80f3f1a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/file1.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+Create the first file.
+
+Add some placeholder text to first file.
+
+
diff --git a/file2.txt b/file2.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..66e494f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/file2.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+This is the second file.
+
+It has an uncommited commit.
+
+We use it to demo default `git diff` behaviour.
+

(These are changes made by all commits btw my root commit and HEAD).

For Root Commit

I find only

git show --color --pretty=format:%b <root_commit_hash>

works.

Like so:

$ git show --color --pretty=format:%b 27e521ca73a46b2d3a28568dc49fced81e46aaea

diff --git a/README b/README
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..12a04f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+# git-diff-demo
+
+This repo documents the demo of the git diff command.
+We will have options, and use cases.

(My root commit added only the README)

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In case of checking the source change in a graphical view, use:

gitk (your commit id goes here)

For example:

gitk HEAD~1 

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git difftool "HASH_in_history" -- "path_to_file"

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