<i>git show</i><p>Did you miss the part where I said I'd like to <i>not involve the VCS tool</i>? Without using git, how do I see two different branches' versions of files?<p><i>So never delete branches. You'll know if they're "done" if they've been merged into your master branch.</i><p>But nobody else will. What everybody and their brother has told me to do is delete the branch and invent an ad-hoc naming scheme to tag the merge commits. Which is... um, no, that's not the same as being able to close a branch.