Sometimes before merging a development branch back into the master branch, I want to see what files were changed. The command to do this in git is simple. It will list out the files that were either added, modified, or deleted.

git diff --name-status branch1..branch2

An example of checking a development branch against the master branch:

git diff --name-status master..development

Will output:

A   app/controllers/new_controller.rb
M   app/views/layout/main_template.html.erb
D   app/assets/javascripts/demo.js

The output makes it easy to quickly see what files were changed and their statuses between the two branches.