To display a list of commits that are reachable from given commits in a Git repository, as well as show the differences between those commits and the original commits, you can use the following commands in the Git command line interface.
1. List reachable commits: You can use the git log command along with the commit hash (or refs) to display a list of commits that are reachable from a given commit. For example, if you have a commit hash abc1234, you can use:
git log abc1234..
This command lists all commits reachable from the commit abc1234 but excludes abc1234 itself.
If you want to include the given commit itself, you can just use:
git log abc1234
2. Show differences: To see the differences between the given commit and the reachable commits, you can use the git diff command. If you want to compare the state of the repository at the commit abc1234 with its parent commits (or any other commit), you can do:
git diff abc1234^ abc1234
This compares the commit abc1234 with its immediate parent. If abc1234 has multiple parents (such as in a merge commit), you can specify the specific parent you want to compare against.
3. Show differences for all reachable commits: If you want to see diffs for multiple commits, you could iterate over the reachable commits and show differences for each. Here’s a simple bash command that combines the commands:
git log abc1234.. --pretty=format:"%H" | while read commit; do
echo "Differences for commit $commit:"
git diff $commit^ $commit
done
This will output the differences for each of the reachable commits from abc1234.
Summary
The approach involves using git log to find reachable commits and git diff to compare them. Adjust the commands according to your specific needs, such as comparing with parent commits or looking through a range of commits.