Git: Performing a diff between two stashes

One approach would be to first turn both XML files into Canonical XML, and compare the results using diff. For example, xmllint can be used to canonicalize XML.

$ xmllint --c14n one.xml > 1.xml
$ xmllint --c14n two.xml > 2.xml
$ diff 1.xml 2.xml

Or as a one-liner.

$ diff <(xmllint --c14n one.xml) <(xmllint --c14n two.xml)

You will have to reference the SHA explicitly if you want to see the diff of a file that was not changed between the last commit and the one before it (HEAD~1).

Run the log to see a few of the SHAs you'll want to view

git log --oneline <file>

An example output is as follows:

af46919 scraped - called local pizzeria instead
b09206c added sauce and bottle of dr pepper into list
ad90f90 knead dough and leave over night

Now if you want to see the diff of changes made for the file, you reference it via the second SHA you see. In this case we have this from the example:

git diff b09206c <file>

The above is shorthand for

git diff b09206c HEAD <file>

Or think of it like this:

git diff <start-commit-SHA> <future-commit-SHA> <file>

To run it as one command (e.g. for script) you can do:

git log --oneline <file> |awk 'NR==2{print $1}'|xargs -I {} git diff {} <file>