How to do a git diff on moved/renamed file?

git diff file-rename mv
dr jerry picture dr jerry · Apr 20, 2011 · Viewed 28.8k times · Source

I moved a file using git mv. Now I would like to do a diff on the new file to compare it with the old file (with the old, now non-existent name).

How do I do this?

Answer

Zitrax picture Zitrax · Apr 12, 2012

You need to use -M to let git autodetect the moved file when diffing. Using just git diff as knittl mentioned does not work for me.

So simply: git diff -M should do it.

The documentation for this switch is:

-M[<n>], --find-renames[=<n>]
       Detect renames. If n is specified, it is a threshold on the similarity index 
       (i.e. amount of addition/deletions compared to the file’s size). For example, 
       -M90% means git should consider a delete/add pair to be a rename if more than
       90% of the file hasn’t changed.

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