How can I find all commits that are in one branch but not in another using git?

Question

I've two branches, master and live. Master is the development branch and contains commits that aren't ready to go into live.

• If a change is made in the master branch that needs to go into the live branch then they're cherry picked from master to live.
• Sometimes commits are made to the live branch that are then either cherry picked into master or merged into master.

What I want to be able to do is view all the commits that are in master than aren't in live, I've had a good search on here and Google and I was using this:

git log --cherry-pick --no-merges --oneline master...live 

This worked until I merged live into master. But now it lists several commits that are in both.

So what is the correct command to view all commits that are in the master branch and not in the live branch?

Answer 1

You are very close. The correct command is:

git log --cherry-pick --oneline --no-merges --left-only master...live 

from the log manpage:

--left-only, --right-only

List only commits on the respective side of a symmetric range, i.e. only those which would be marked < resp. > by --left-right.

For example, --cherry-pick --right-only A...B omits those commits from B which are in A or are patch-equivalent to a commit in A. In other words, this lists the + commits from git cherry A B. More precisely, --cherry-pick --right-only --no-merges gives the exact list.

Answer 2

git log master ^live --no-merges