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I want to directly compare the diffs of two commits in emacs (rather than seeing the diff of two trees at given commit points).

A bonus would be being able to use ediff mode to compare the two buffers.

However there seems to be no way to have two *magit-revision* buffers open at once. Even if I rename the first, (magit-visit-ref) still updates that buffer.

I've looked through the manuals but couldn't find a reference to what controls the new buffer creation. Any ideas?

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  • Not clear to me if you're asking to get a diff between two commits, or look at two diffs from two commits at once.
    – npostavs
    Oct 20, 2016 at 13:38
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    @npostavs: the second, I want to compare the two commits side by side to see what changed in a particular changeset rather than over the whole tree.
    – stsquad
    Oct 20, 2016 at 13:41
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    Have you tried running magit-toggle-buffer-lock on the first revision buffer rather than renaming it?
    – Kyle Meyer
    Oct 20, 2016 at 13:45
  • @KyleMeyer: ahh that makes sense - and works ;-)
    – stsquad
    Oct 20, 2016 at 13:47
  • @KyleMeyer: are you going to write up your answer or do you want me to do it?
    – stsquad
    Oct 21, 2016 at 10:54

2 Answers 2

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Based on Kyle Meyer's comment to the OP -- thanks, Kyle.

It seems that what you want is to see the diffs associated with the two commits in two separate magit-revision buffers. You can accomplish this by loading up the first diff in the usual way (e.g. by hitting RET on it in a log view), running M-x magit-toggle-buffer-lock so that the buffer becomes pinned to that particular view, and then loading up the second diff in the usual way.

Without M-x magit-toggle-buffer-lock, Magit would reuse the buffer containing the first diff, erasing it and putting the second diff there instead. With M-x magit-toggle-buffer-lock, Magit is "forced" to create a new buffer for the second diff, which is what you want.

Note that djangoliv's answer does something different; it starts up an ediff session comparing the versions of a file from two different different commits.

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You can do it from the magit-log buffer

  • M-x magit-log
  • E r ref1..ref2
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  • You can do it from the status buffer too (although seeing the log will help to find the refs, of course)
    – npostavs
    Oct 20, 2016 at 13:39
  • This does get what I want, almost, is it possible to show the revisions side by side for all files or do I need to compare a file at a time?
    – stsquad
    Oct 20, 2016 at 13:46
  • you need to compare a file at a time.
    – djangoliv
    Oct 21, 2016 at 6:55
  • brilliant, should be the answer. I wonder if there is a way to Ediff bunch of files from one commit to another rather than Ediffing files one by one between these two commits.
    – doctorate
    Jan 8 at 20:12

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