How would you use git diff to see changes made since a certain date?

To see changes that have been made since a particular date, you can use the git diff command in combination with the git log command. However, git diff doesn’t directly support the functionality to filter differences since a specific date. So, the process can be a little roundabout. Here’s how to do it:

Step 1:

First, you need to find the hash of the commit that was made just before the date in question. You can use git log for this. Suppose you want to see changes since 9:00 PM on June 14, 2023. You’d use the command:

git log --until="2023-06-14T21:00:00"

This will list all commits made before June 14, 2023, 9:00 PM. In this log, the latest commit hash is the commit just before the date in question.

Step 2:

Once you have the commit hash, you can use git diff to see the changes since that commit. Let’s say the hash of the commit is abc123, you’d use the following command:

git diff abc123

This will show you all the changes that were made after the commit abc123, effectively showing you all changes made since the date in question.

It’s important to remember that Git timestamps are in UTC, so if you’re in a different time zone, you’ll need to adjust the time accordingly.

Lastly, this method shows changes in the entire codebase. If you’re only interested in a specific file or directory, you can specify that after the git diff command, like so:

git diff abc123 path/to/file

This way, you can see all changes made to a specific file or directory since a certain date.