Question

I have forked a project on github and need to have a set of changes I made since I forked, in diff format.

If you wonder – I’ve forked Apache httpd and I’m changing some code in core. Currently I’m not commiting any changes, running git diff, and use its output as a patch against vanilla httpd sources in an RPM building process. It is, of course, wrong, but I don’t know how to do it properly. All I know is I need a diff in the end.

Answer 1

Online solution:

get /repos/{owner}/{repo}/compare/{base}...{head}

The "compare two commits" API does support multiple repositories:

Both :base and :head must be branch names in :repo.
To compare branches across other repositories in the same network as :repo, use the format <USERNAME>:branch.

Example:

https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/hello-world/compare/master…abejpn:master

Or with a GitHub URL:

https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/compare/master…abejpn:master

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Original answer 2010:

• Add the original GitHub repo (the one you have forked) as a remote one on your local repo.
  (git remote add mainRepo github_url)
• git fetch mainRepo to get the latest changes from that original "mainRepo".
• git log HEAD..mainRepo/master will show you all your changes between the latest on mainRepo master branch and your current branch.
  git diff HEAD..mainRepo/master would display it in diff format.

In learn.GitHub:

git diff mainRepo/master...HEAD

would list all your changes since you have forked from mainRepo:

This will not compare the last ‘master’ branch snapshot and the last ‘dev’ snapshot – it will instead compare the common ancestor of both with ‘dev’. That will tell you what changed since the branch point.