Using Release Flow Branching: How to prevent Azure DevOps from showing all changes since the first commit for new release branches?

Question

I am using Release Flow branching in Azure DevOps, where each new release branch (release/x) is created from main.

• How can I control how Azure DevOps determines "new changes" for a release branch?
• Can I manually specify the previous release as the comparison base instead of it defaulting to the first commit?
• Is there a YAML setting, UI configuration, or API method that allows me to change how changes are tracked between release branches?

Repo Steps to Reproduce:

1. Create a new release branch from main.
2. Run a build in Azure DevOps on release/x.
3. Open the "View Changes" tab in the build summary.
4. Azure DevOps shows all commits in the repository since the first commit, instead of just the changes between release/x-1 and release/x. Releases are triggered from release branches using YAML pipelines.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/devops/develop/how-microsoft-develops-devops

Answer 1

Hi @Jacques Oosthuizen ,

Change the Release Flow Strategy:

Instead of creating new release/x branches from main,

create them from the previous release (release/x-1)

Instead of this (creates issue in Azure DevOps):

git checkout -b release/2.0 main

Do this instead:

git checkout -b release/2.0 release/1.0
git push origin release/2.0

• Ensures that Azure DevOps naturally tracks changes only since release/x-1.
• Fixes the "View Changes" tab showing all commits since the first commit issue.

Manually Specify Previous Release as Base:

Tag the latest release (release/x-1) before creating a new branch:

git tag -a release-1.0 -m "Tagging release 1.0" git push origin release-1.0

Create a new release branch (release/x) from release/x-1:

git checkout -b release/2.0 release-1.0
git push origin release/2.0

Manually compare releases in Azure DevOps UI:

• Go to Azure DevOps → Repos → Branches
• Click Compare branches
• Select release/x as the target and release/x-1 (or tag release-1.0) as the base

Or compare using Git CLI:

git log release-1.0.. release-2.0 --oneline

• Azure DevOps doesn’t have a built-in option in the UI or YAML to control how changes are tracked between release branches.
• Use the following Azure DevOps REST API to manually compare the previous release (release/x-1) with the new release (release/x):

curl -X GET -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN" \

"https://dev.azure.com/{organization}/{project}/_apis/git/repositories/{repoId}/commitsbatch?searchCriteria.itemVersion.version=release/x&searchCriteria.compareVersion.version=release/x-1&api-version=7.1-preview.1"

Hope it helps!

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