Does git have an option to show the commits to be merged before performing the merge?

Question

For example, when I merge from master -> production, I'd like to see a list of the commits before I, err, commit to them. Something like:

$ git merge --doublecheck master
Commits to merge:
1292642 fix foo
3c0f30b cleanup bar
Do you want to proceed? (y/n)

Answer 1

You can use revision range double-dot .. syntax to do this:

git log --oneline --graph <branch-to-merge-into>..<branch-to-be-merged>

The output will be all commits in <branch-to-be-merged> that aren't in <branch-to-merge-into>.

You can learn more about this and other revision range syntaxes in the Commit Ranges section of the FREE online Pro Git book.