diff: comparing patch series

The diff subcommand allows comparing two different revisions of the same patch series using git range-diff. Note, that in order to perform the range-diff comparison, both revisions need to cleanly apply to the current tree, which may not always be easy to achieve.

The easiest way to use it is to prepare two mbox files of the series you would like to compare first:

$ b4 am --no-cover -n ver1 msgid-of-ver-1
$ b4 am --no-cover -n ver2 msgid-of-ver-2
$ b4 diff -m ver1.mbx ver2.mbx

Optional flags

-g GITDIR, --gitdir GITDIR

Specify a path to the git tree to use, if not running the command inside a git tree.

-C, --no-cache

By default, b4 will cache the retrieved threads for about 10 minutes. This lets you force b4 to ignore cache and retrieve the latest results.

-v WANTVERS [WANTVERS ...], --compare-versions WANTVERS [WANTVERS ...]

To properly work, this requires that both versions being compared are part of the same thread, which is rarely the case. In the future, this may work better as more series use the change-id trailer to keep track of revisions across discussion threads.

Example: b4 diff <msgid> -v 2 3

-n, --no-diff

By default, b4 diff will output the results of the range-diff command. However, this can be a wall of text, so instead you may want to just view the command that you can run yourself with the ranges prepared by b4. This additionally allows you to tweak the git-range flags to use.

-m AMBOX AMBOX, --compare-am-mboxes AMBOX AMBOX

Compares two mbox files prepared by b4 am instead of querying the public-inbox server directly.

--range-diff-opts RANGE_DIFF_OPTS

Additional arguments passed to git range-diff. For example:

b4 diff --range-diff-opts "--creation-factor=80 --no-dual-color" <url>

New in version v0.15.

-o OUTDIFF, --output-diff OUTDIFF

Sends range-diff output into a file.

Deprecated since version v0.10: You should use -n instead and redirect output from the actual git range-diff command.

-c, --color

Show colour output even when outputting into a file.

Deprecated since version v0.10: You should use -n instead and modify flags to range-diff.