From: Junio C Hamano
The first two lines indicate that it is showing the two branches and the first line of the commit log message from their top-of-the-tree commits, you are currently on master branch -(notice the asterisk character), and the first column for +(notice the asterisk * character), and the first column for the later output lines is used to show commits contained in the master branch, and the second column for the mybranch branch. Three commits are shown along with their log messages. -All of them have non blank characters in the first column ( +All of them have non blank characters in the first column (* shows an ordinary commit on the current branch, . is a merge commit), which means they are now part of the master branch. Only the "Some work" commit has the plus + character in the second column, @@ -2011,7 +2011,7 @@ to follow, not easier.