To display the list of commits that are ancestors of a specified commit but exclude commits that are ancestors of another specified commit in Git, you can use the following command with the git log tool:
git log <commit1> ^<commit2>
In this command:
- <commit1> is the commit you want to display the ancestors of.
- <commit2> is the commit whose ancestors you want to exclude from the output.
The caret (^) before <commit2> tells Git to exclude all commits that are ancestors of <commit2>.
You can also use the --ancestry-path flag if you want to restrict the output to commits that are directly on the ancestry path to <commit1>. Here it would look something like this:
git log --ancestry-path <commit1> ^<commit2>
This command will show you the commits that are ancestors of <commit1> but not ancestors of <commit2>, keeping the output clean and relevant to your specific needs.