Show changes between the working tree and the index or a tree, changes between the index and a tree,
changes between two trees, or changes between two files on disk.

-p, -u, --patch
    Generate patch (see section on generating patches). This is the default.

-U<n>, --unified=<n>
    Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of the usual three. Implies -p.

--raw
    Generate the raw format.

--patch-with-raw
    Synonym for -p --raw.

--minimal
    Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced.

--patience
    Generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.

--histogram
    Generate a diff using the "histogram diff" algorithm.

--stat[=<width>[,<name-width>[,<count>]]]
    Generate a diffstat. You can override the default output width for 80-column terminal by
    --stat=<width>. The width of the filename part can be controlled by giving another width to it
    separated by a comma. By giving a third parameter <count>, you can limit the output to the first
    <count> lines, followed by ...  if there are more.

    These parameters can also be set individually with --stat-width=<width>,
    --stat-name-width=<name-width> and --stat-count=<count>.

--numstat
    Similar to --stat, but shows number of added and deleted lines in decimal notation and pathname
    without abbreviation, to make it more machine friendly. For binary files, outputs two - instead of
    saying 0 0.

--shortstat
    Output only the last line of the --stat format containing total number of modified files, as well as
    number of added and deleted lines.

--dirstat[=<param1,param2,...>]
    Output the distribution of relative amount of changes for each sub-directory. The behavior of
    --dirstat can be customized by passing it a comma separated list of parameters. The defaults are
    controlled by the diff.dirstat configuration variable (see git-config(1)). The following parameters
    are available:

    changes
        Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that have been removed from the source, or
        added to the destination. This ignores the amount of pure code movements within a file. In other
        words, rearranging lines in a file is not counted as much as other changes. This is the default
        behavior when no parameter is given.

    lines
        Compute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular line-based diff analysis, and summing the
        removed/added line counts. (For binary files, count 64-byte chunks instead, since binary files
        have no natural concept of lines). This is a more expensive --dirstat behavior than the changes
        behavior, but it does count rearranged lines within a file as much as other changes. The
        resulting output is consistent with what you get from the other --*stat options.

    files
        Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of files changed. Each changed file counts
        equally in the dirstat analysis. This is the computationally cheapest --dirstat behavior, since
        it does not have to look at the file contents at all.

    cumulative
        Count changes in a child directory for the parent directory as well. Note that when using
        cumulative, the sum of the percentages reported may exceed 100%. The default (non-cumulative)
        behavior can be specified with the noncumulative parameter.

    <limit>
        An integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by default). Directories contributing less
        than this percentage of the changes are not shown in the output.

    Example: The following will count changed files, while ignoring directories with less than 10% of the
    total amount of changed files, and accumulating child directory counts in the parent directories:
    --dirstat=files,10,cumulative.

--summary
    Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as creations, renames and mode
    changes.

--patch-with-stat
    Synonym for -p --stat.

-z
    When --raw, --numstat, --name-only or --name-status has been given, do not munge pathnames and use
    NULs as output field terminators.

    Without this option, each pathname output will have TAB, LF, double quotes, and backslash characters
    replaced with \t, \n, \", and \\, respectively, and the pathname will be enclosed in double quotes if
    any of those replacements occurred.

--name-only
    Show only names of changed files.

--name-status
    Show only names and status of changed files. See the description of the --diff-filter option on what
    the status letters mean.

--submodule[=<format>]
    Chose the output format for submodule differences. <format> can be one of short and log.  short just
    shows pairs of commit names, this format is used when this option is not given.  log is the default
    value for this option and lists the commits in that commit range like the summary option of git-
    submodule(1) does.

--color[=<when>]
    Show colored diff. The value must be always (the default for <when>), never, or auto. The default
    value is never. It can be changed by the color.ui and color.diff configuration settings.

--no-color
    Turn off colored diff. This can be used to override configuration settings. It is the same as
    --color=never.

--word-diff[=<mode>]
    Show a word diff, using the <mode> to delimit changed words. By default, words are delimited by
    whitespace; see --word-diff-regex below. The <mode> defaults to plain, and must be one of:

    color
        Highlight changed words using only colors. Implies --color.

    plain
        Show words as [-removed-] and {added}. Makes no attempts to escape the delimiters if they appear
        in the input, so the output may be ambiguous.

    porcelain
        Use a special line-based format intended for script consumption. Added/removed/unchanged runs are
        printed in the usual unified diff format, starting with a +/-/` ` character at the beginning of
        the line and extending to the end of the line. Newlines in the input are represented by a tilde ~
        on a line of its own.

    none
        Disable word diff again.

    Note that despite the name of the first mode, color is used to highlight the changed parts in all
    modes if enabled.

--word-diff-regex=<regex>
    Use <regex> to decide what a word is, instead of considering runs of non-whitespace to be a word.
    Also implies --word-diff unless it was already enabled.

    Every non-overlapping match of the <regex> is considered a word. Anything between these matches is
    considered whitespace and ignored(!) for the purposes of finding differences. You may want to append
    |[^[:space:]] to your regular expression to make sure that it matches all non-whitespace characters.
    A match that contains a newline is silently truncated(!) at the newline.

    The regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration option, see gitattributes(1) or git-
    config(1). Giving it explicitly overrides any diff driver or configuration setting. Diff drivers
    override configuration settings.

--color-words[=<regex>]
    Equivalent to --word-diff=color plus (if a regex was specified) --word-diff-regex=<regex>.

--no-renames
    Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration file gives the default to do so.

--check
    Warn if changes introduce whitespace errors. What are considered whitespace errors is controlled by
    core.whitespace configuration. By default, trailing whitespaces (including lines that solely consist
    of whitespaces) and a space character that is immediately followed by a tab character inside the
    initial indent of the line are considered whitespace errors. Exits with non-zero status if problems
    are found. Not compatible with --exit-code.

--full-index
    Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full pre- and post-image blob object names on
    the "index" line when generating patch format output.

--binary
    In addition to --full-index, output a binary diff that can be applied with git-apply.

--abbrev[=<n>]
    Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name in diff-raw format output and diff-tree
    header lines, show only a partial prefix. This is independent of the --full-index option above, which
    controls the diff-patch output format. Non default number of digits can be specified with
    --abbrev=<n>.

-B[<n>][/<m>], --break-rewrites[=[<n>][/<m>]]
    Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create. This serves two purposes:

    It affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite of a file not as a series of deletion and
    insertion mixed together with a very few lines that happen to match textually as the context, but as
    a single deletion of everything old followed by a single insertion of everything new, and the number
    m controls this aspect of the -B option (defaults to 60%).  -B/70% specifies that less than 30% of
    the original should remain in the result for git to consider it a total rewrite (i.e. otherwise the
    resulting patch will be a series of deletion and insertion mixed together with context lines).

    When used with -M, a totally-rewritten file is also considered as the source of a rename (usually -M
    only considers a file that disappeared as the source of a rename), and the number n controls this
    aspect of the -B option (defaults to 50%).  -B20% specifies that a change with addition and deletion
    compared to 20% or more of the file’s size are eligible for being picked up as a possible source of a
    rename to another file.

-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.

-C[<n>], --find-copies[=<n>]
    Detect copies as well as renames. See also --find-copies-harder. If n is specified, it has the same
    meaning as for -M<n>.

--find-copies-harder
    For performance reasons, by default, -C option finds copies only if the original file of the copy was
    modified in the same changeset. This flag makes the command inspect unmodified files as candidates
    for the source of copy. This is a very expensive operation for large projects, so use it with
    caution. Giving more than one -C option has the same effect.

-D, --irreversible-delete
    Omit the preimage for deletes, i.e. print only the header but not the diff between the preimage and
    /dev/null. The resulting patch is not meant to be applied with patch nor git apply; this is solely
    for people who want to just concentrate on reviewing the text after the change. In addition, the
    output obviously lack enough information to apply such a patch in reverse, even manually, hence the
    name of the option.

    When used together with -B, omit also the preimage in the deletion part of a delete/create pair.

-l<num>
    The -M and -C options require O(n^2) processing time where n is the number of potential rename/copy
    targets. This option prevents rename/copy detection from running if the number of rename/copy targets
    exceeds the specified number.

--diff-filter=[(A|C|D|M|R|T|U|X|B)...[*]]
    Select only files that are Added (A), Copied (C), Deleted (D), Modified (M), Renamed (R), have their
    type (i.e. regular file, symlink, submodule, ...) changed (T), are Unmerged (U), are Unknown (X), or
    have had their pairing Broken (B). Any combination of the filter characters (including none) can be
    used. When * (All-or-none) is added to the combination, all paths are selected if there is any file
    that matches other criteria in the comparison; if there is no file that matches other criteria,
    nothing is selected.

-S<string>
    Look for differences that introduce or remove an instance of <string>. Note that this is different
    than the string simply appearing in diff output; see the pickaxe entry in gitdiffcore(7) for more
    details.

-G<regex>
    Look for differences whose added or removed line matches the given <regex>.

--pickaxe-all
    When -S or -G finds a change, show all the changes in that changeset, not just the files that contain
    the change in <string>.

--pickaxe-regex
    Make the <string> not a plain string but an extended POSIX regex to match.

-O<orderfile>
    Output the patch in the order specified in the <orderfile>, which has one shell glob pattern per
    line.

-R
    Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or on-disk file to tree contents.

--relative[=<path>]
    When run from a subdirectory of the project, it can be told to exclude changes outside the directory
    and show pathnames relative to it with this option. When you are not in a subdirectory (e.g. in a
    bare repository), you can name which subdirectory to make the output relative to by giving a <path>
    as an argument.

-a, --text
    Treat all files as text.

--ignore-space-at-eol
    Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.

-b, --ignore-space-change
    Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace at line end, and considers all other
    sequences of one or more whitespace characters to be equivalent.

-w, --ignore-all-space
    Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences even if one line has whitespace
    where the other line has none.

--inter-hunk-context=<lines>
    Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified number of lines, thereby fusing hunks that
    are close to each other.

-W, --function-context
    Show whole surrounding functions of changes.

--exit-code
    Make the program exit with codes similar to diff(1). That is, it exits with 1 if there were
    differences and 0 means no differences.

--quiet
    Disable all output of the program. Implies --exit-code.

--ext-diff
    Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set an external diff driver with
    gitattributes(5), you need to use this option with git-log(1) and friends.

--no-ext-diff
    Disallow external diff drivers.

--textconv, --no-textconv
    Allow (or disallow) external text conversion filters to be run when comparing binary files. See
    gitattributes(5) for details. Because textconv filters are typically a one-way conversion, the
    resulting diff is suitable for human consumption, but cannot be applied. For this reason, textconv
    filters are enabled by default only for git-diff(1) and git-log(1), but not for git-format-patch(1)
    or diff plumbing commands.

--ignore-submodules[=<when>]
    Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation. <when> can be either "none", "untracked",
    "dirty" or "all", which is the default Using "none" will consider the submodule modified when it
    either contains untracked or modified files or its HEAD differs from the commit recorded in the
    superproject and can be used to override any settings of the ignore option in git-config(1) or
    gitmodules(5). When "untracked" is used submodules are not considered dirty when they only contain
    untracked content (but they are still scanned for modified content). Using "dirty" ignores all
    changes to the work tree of submodules, only changes to the commits stored in the superproject are
    shown (this was the behavior until 1.7.0). Using "all" hides all changes to submodules.

--src-prefix=<prefix>
    Show the given source prefix instead of "a/".

--dst-prefix=<prefix>
    Show the given destination prefix instead of "b/".

--no-prefix
    Do not show any source or destination prefix.