Check changes after git pull

You can use “git pull” to retrieve the latest commits in a git branch that are not yet present in your local branch. 

To see what changed after “git pull”, you should note the id of the latest commit before the pull request. After the pull request, you can issue “git diff” on the noted commit id and the newest commit id in the updated branch to get all the changes.

Let us see through a hands-on example.

The initial setup is as shown. “git log –oneline” command indicates that there are three commits. “git status” shows that there are two more commits that are not present in the local branch, and we should issue “git pull”. 

Before issuing “git pull”, note down the latest commit id. Here, it is 42296d0.

~/repoone$ git log --oneline
42296d0 (HEAD -> main) Second commit in main
453424e This is first commit
2673111 Initial commit

~/repoone$ git status
On branch main
Your branch is behind 'origin/main' by 2 commits, and can be fast-forwarded.
  (use "git pull" to update your local branch)

nothing to commit, working tree clean

We issued “git pull” to get the local branch updated.

~/repoone$ git pull
Updating 42296d0..4632c0d
Fast-forward
 dirtwo/.gitignore | 4 ++++
 filefive          | 0
 filesix           | 0
 3 files changed, 4 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 dirtwo/.gitignore
 create mode 100644 filefive
 create mode 100644 filesix

Use “git log –oneline” to see the list of commits and note down the latest commit ID; it is 4632c0d.

~/repoone$ git log --oneline
4632c0d (HEAD -> main, origin/maincopy, origin/main, origin/HEAD) Adding empty directory
908d6ac Third commit in main
42296d0 Second commit in main
453424e This is first commit
2673111 Initial commit

To know what all changed after “git pull”, issue “git diff” on the two commit ids, i.e., git diff 42296d0..4632c0d. You can see in the example shown that all the changes after the pull are listed.

~/repoone$ git diff 42296d0..4632c0d
diff --git a/dirtwo/.gitignore b/dirtwo/.gitignore
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e7d273
--- /dev/null
+++ b/dirtwo/.gitignore
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+# Ignore everything in this directory
+*
+# Except this file
+!.gitignore
diff --git a/filefive b/filefive
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e69de29
diff --git a/filesix b/filesix
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e69de29