| GIT-LOG(1) | Git Manual | GIT-LOG(1) |
NAME¶
git-log - Show commit logs
SYNOPSIS¶
git log [<options>] [<revision range>] [[--] <path>...]
DESCRIPTION¶
Shows the commit logs.
The command takes options applicable to the git rev-list command to control what is shown and how, and options applicable to the git diff-* commands to control how the changes each commit introduces are shown.
OPTIONS¶
--follow
--no-decorate, --decorate[=short|full|no]
--source
--use-mailmap
--full-diff
Note that this affects all diff-based output types, e.g. those produced by --stat etc.
--log-size
<revision range>
[--] <path>...
Paths may need to be prefixed with "-- " to separate them from options or the revision range, when confusion arises.
Commit Limiting¶
Besides specifying a range of commits that should be listed using the special notations explained in the description, additional commit limiting may be applied.
Using more options generally further limits the output (e.g. --since=<date1> limits to commits newer than <date1>, and using it with --grep=<pattern> further limits to commits whose log message has a line that matches <pattern>), unless otherwise noted.
Note that these are applied before commit ordering and formatting options, such as --reverse.
-<number>, -n <number>, --max-count=<number>
--skip=<number>
--since=<date>, --after=<date>
--until=<date>, --before=<date>
--author=<pattern>, --committer=<pattern>
--grep-reflog=<pattern>
--grep=<pattern>
When --show-notes is in effect, the message from the notes as if it is part of the log message.
--all-match
-i, --regexp-ignore-case
--basic-regexp
-E, --extended-regexp
-F, --fixed-strings
--perl-regexp
--remove-empty
--merges
--no-merges
--min-parents=<number>, --max-parents=<number>, --no-min-parents, --no-max-parents
--no-min-parents and --no-max-parents reset these limits (to no limit) again. Equivalent forms are --min-parents=0 (any commit has 0 or more parents) and --max-parents=-1 (negative numbers denote no upper limit).
--first-parent
--not
--all
--branches[=<pattern>]
--tags[=<pattern>]
--remotes[=<pattern>]
--glob=<glob-pattern>
--ignore-missing
--bisect
--stdin
--cherry-mark
--cherry-pick
For example, if you have two branches, A and B, a usual way to list all commits on only one side of them is with --left-right (see the example below in the description of the --left-right option). It however shows the commits that were cherry-picked from the other branch (for example, "3rd on b" may be cherry-picked from branch A). With this option, such pairs of commits are excluded from the output.
--left-only, --right-only
For example, --cherry-pick --right-only A...B omits those commits from B which are in A or are patch-equivalent to a commit in A. In other words, this lists the + commits from git cherry A B. More precisely, --cherry-pick --right-only --no-merges gives the exact list.
--cherry
-g, --walk-reflogs
With --pretty format other than oneline (for obvious reasons), this causes the output to have two extra lines of information taken from the reflog. By default, commit@{Nth} notation is used in the output. When the starting commit is specified as commit@{now}, output also uses commit@{timestamp} notation instead. Under --pretty=oneline, the commit message is prefixed with this information on the same line. This option cannot be combined with --reverse. See also git-reflog(1).
--merge
--boundary
History Simplification¶
Sometimes you are only interested in parts of the history, for example the commits modifying a particular <path>. But there are two parts of History Simplification, one part is selecting the commits and the other is how to do it, as there are various strategies to simplify the history.
The following options select the commits to be shown:
<paths>
--simplify-by-decoration
Note that extra commits can be shown to give a meaningful history.
The following options affect the way the simplification is performed:
Default mode
--full-history
--dense
--sparse
--simplify-merges
--ancestry-path
A more detailed explanation follows.
Suppose you specified foo as the <paths>. We shall call commits that modify foo !TREESAME, and the rest TREESAME. (In a diff filtered for foo, they look different and equal, respectively.)
In the following, we will always refer to the same example history to illustrate the differences between simplification settings. We assume that you are filtering for a file foo in this commit graph:
.-A---M---N---O---P
/ / / / /
I B C D E
\ / / / /
`-------------'
The horizontal line of history A---P is taken to be the first parent of each merge. The commits are:
rev-list walks backwards through history, including or excluding commits based on whether --full-history and/or parent rewriting (via --parents or --children) are used. The following settings are available.
Default mode
This results in:
.-A---N---O
/ / /
I---------D
Note how the rule to only follow the TREESAME parent, if one is available, removed B from consideration entirely. C was considered via N, but is TREESAME. Root commits are compared to an empty tree, so I is !TREESAME.
Parent/child relations are only visible with --parents, but that does not affect the commits selected in default mode, so we have shown the parent lines.
--full-history without parent rewriting
I A B N D O
P and M were excluded because they are TREESAME to a parent. E, C and B were all walked, but only B was !TREESAME, so the others do not appear.
Note that without parent rewriting, it is not really possible to talk about the parent/child relationships between the commits, so we show them disconnected.
--full-history with parent rewriting
Merges are always included. However, their parent list is rewritten: Along each parent, prune away commits that are not included themselves. This results in
.-A---M---N---O---P
/ / / / /
I B / D /
\ / / / /
`-------------'
Compare to --full-history without rewriting above. Note that E was pruned away because it is TREESAME, but the parent list of P was rewritten to contain E's parent I. The same happened for C and N. Note also that P was included despite being TREESAME.
In addition to the above settings, you can change whether TREESAME affects inclusion:
--dense
--sparse
Note that without --full-history, this still simplifies merges: if one of the parents is TREESAME, we follow only that one, so the other sides of the merge are never walked.
--simplify-merges
Then simplify each commit C to its replacement C' in the final history according to the following rules:
The effect of this is best shown by way of comparing to --full-history with parent rewriting. The example turns into:
.-A---M---N---O
/ / /
I B D
\ / /
`---------'
Note the major differences in N and P over --full-history:
Finally, there is a fifth simplification mode available:
--ancestry-path
As an example use case, consider the following commit history:
D---E-------F
/ \ \
B---C---G---H---I---J
/ \
A-------K---------------L--M
A regular D..M computes the set of commits that are ancestors of M, but excludes the ones that are ancestors of D. This is useful to see what happened to the history leading to M since D, in the sense that "what does M have that did not exist in D". The result in this example would be all the commits, except A and B (and D itself, of course).
When we want to find out what commits in M are contaminated with the bug introduced by D and need fixing, however, we might want to view only the subset of D..M that are actually descendants of D, i.e. excluding C and K. This is exactly what the --ancestry-path option does. Applied to the D..M range, it results in:
E-------F
\ \
G---H---I---J
\
L--M
The --simplify-by-decoration option allows you to view only the big picture of the topology of the history, by omitting commits that are not referenced by tags. Commits are marked as !TREESAME (in other words, kept after history simplification rules described above) if (1) they are referenced by tags, or (2) they change the contents of the paths given on the command line. All other commits are marked as TREESAME (subject to be simplified away).
Commit Ordering¶
By default, the commits are shown in reverse chronological order.
--date-order
--topo-order
For example, in a commit history like this:
---1----2----4----7
\ \
3----5----6----8---
where the numbers denote the order of commit timestamps, git rev-list and friends with --date-order show the commits in the timestamp order: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1.
With --topo-order, they would show 8 6 5 3 7 4 2 1 (or 8 7 4 2 6 5 3 1); some older commits are shown before newer ones in order to avoid showing the commits from two parallel development track mixed together.
--reverse
Object Traversal¶
These options are mostly targeted for packing of Git repositories.
--objects
--objects-edge
--unpacked
--no-walk[=(sorted|unsorted)]
--do-walk
Commit Formatting¶
--pretty[=<format>], --format=<format>
Note: you can specify the default pretty format in the repository configuration (see git-config(1)).
--abbrev-commit
This should make "--pretty=oneline" a whole lot more readable for people using 80-column terminals.
--no-abbrev-commit
--oneline
--encoding[=<encoding>]
--notes[=<ref>]
By default, the notes shown are from the notes refs listed in the core.notesRef and notes.displayRef variables (or corresponding environment overrides). See git-config(1) for more details.
With an optional <ref> argument, show this notes ref instead of the default notes ref(s). The ref is taken to be in refs/notes/ if it is not qualified.
Multiple --notes options can be combined to control which notes are being displayed. Examples: "--notes=foo" will show only notes from "refs/notes/foo"; "--notes=foo --notes" will show both notes from "refs/notes/foo" and from the default notes ref(s).
--no-notes
--show-notes[=<ref>], --[no-]standard-notes
--show-signature
--relative-date
--date=(relative|local|default|iso|rfc|short|raw)
--date=relative shows dates relative to the current time, e.g. "2 hours ago".
--date=local shows timestamps in user’s local timezone.
--date=iso (or --date=iso8601) shows timestamps in ISO 8601 format.
--date=rfc (or --date=rfc2822) shows timestamps in RFC 2822 format, often found in E-mail messages.
--date=short shows only date but not time, in YYYY-MM-DD format.
--date=raw shows the date in the internal raw Git format %s %z format.
--date=default shows timestamps in the original timezone (either committer’s or author’s).
--parents
--children
--left-right
For example, if you have this topology:
y---b---b branch B
/ \ /
/ .
/ / \
o---x---a---a branch A
you would get an output like this:
$ git rev-list --left-right --boundary --pretty=oneline A...B
>bbbbbbb... 3rd on b
>bbbbbbb... 2nd on b
<aaaaaaa... 3rd on a
<aaaaaaa... 2nd on a
-yyyyyyy... 1st on b
-xxxxxxx... 1st on a
--graph
This enables parent rewriting, see History Simplification below.
This implies the --topo-order option by default, but the --date-order option may also be specified.
Diff Formatting¶
Below are listed options that control the formatting of diff output. Some of them are specific to git-rev-list(1), however other diff options may be given. See git-diff-files(1) for more options.
-c
--cc
-m
-r
-t
-s
PRETTY FORMATS¶
If the commit is a merge, and if the pretty-format is not oneline, email or raw, an additional line is inserted before the Author: line. This line begins with "Merge: " and the sha1s of ancestral commits are printed, separated by spaces. Note that the listed commits may not necessarily be the list of the direct parent commits if you have limited your view of history: for example, if you are only interested in changes related to a certain directory or file.
There are several built-in formats, and you can define additional formats by setting a pretty.<name> config option to either another format name, or a format: string, as described below (see git-config(1)). Here are the details of the built-in formats:
<sha1> <title line>
This is designed to be as compact as possible.
commit <sha1> Author: <author>
<title line>
commit <sha1> Author: <author> Date: <author date>
<title line>
<full commit message>
commit <sha1> Author: <author> Commit: <committer>
<title line>
<full commit message>
commit <sha1> Author: <author> AuthorDate: <author date> Commit: <committer> CommitDate: <committer date>
<title line>
<full commit message>
From <sha1> <date> From: <author> Date: <author date> Subject: [PATCH] <title line>
<full commit message>
The raw format shows the entire commit exactly as stored in the commit object. Notably, the SHA-1s are displayed in full, regardless of whether --abbrev or --no-abbrev are used, and parents information show the true parent commits, without taking grafts nor history simplification into account.
The format:<string> format allows you to specify which information you want to show. It works a little bit like printf format, with the notable exception that you get a newline with %n instead of \n.
E.g, format:"The author of %h was %an, %ar%nThe title was >>%s<<%n" would show something like this:
The author of fe6e0ee was Junio C Hamano, 23 hours ago The title was >>t4119: test autocomputing -p<n> for traditional diff input.<<
The placeholders are:
Note
Some placeholders may depend on other options given to the revision traversal engine. For example, the %g* reflog options will insert an empty string unless we are traversing reflog entries (e.g., by git log -g). The %d placeholder will use the "short" decoration format if --decorate was not already provided on the command line.
If you add a + (plus sign) after % of a placeholder, a line-feed is inserted immediately before the expansion if and only if the placeholder expands to a non-empty string.
If you add a - (minus sign) after % of a placeholder, line-feeds that immediately precede the expansion are deleted if and only if the placeholder expands to an empty string.
If you add a ` ` (space) after % of a placeholder, a space is inserted immediately before the expansion if and only if the placeholder expands to a non-empty string.
The tformat: format works exactly like format:, except that it provides "terminator" semantics instead of "separator" semantics. In other words, each commit has the message terminator character (usually a newline) appended, rather than a separator placed between entries. This means that the final entry of a single-line format will be properly terminated with a new line, just as the "oneline" format does. For example:
$ git log -2 --pretty=format:%h 4da45bef \
| perl -pe '$_ .= " -- NO NEWLINE\n" unless /\n/' 4da45be 7134973 -- NO NEWLINE $ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef \
| perl -pe '$_ .= " -- NO NEWLINE\n" unless /\n/' 4da45be 7134973
In addition, any unrecognized string that has a % in it is interpreted as if it has tformat: in front of it. For example, these two are equivalent:
$ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef $ git log -2 --pretty=%h 4da45bef
COMMON DIFF OPTIONS¶
-p, -u, --patch
-U<n>, --unified=<n>
--raw
--patch-with-raw
--minimal
--patience
--histogram
--diff-algorithm={patience|minimal|histogram|myers}
default, myers
minimal
patience
histogram
For instance, if you configured diff.algorithm variable to a non-default value and want to use the default one, then you have to use --diff-algorithm=default option.
--stat[=<width>[,<name-width>[,<count>]]]
These parameters can also be set individually with --stat-width=<width>, --stat-name-width=<name-width> and --stat-count=<count>.
--numstat
--shortstat
--dirstat[=<param1,param2,...>]
changes
lines
files
cumulative
<limit>
Example: The following will count changed files, while ignoring directories with less than 10% of the total amount of changed files, and accumulating child directory counts in the parent directories: --dirstat=files,10,cumulative.
--summary
--patch-with-stat
-z
Also, when --raw or --numstat has been given, do not munge pathnames and use NULs as output field terminators.
Without this option, each pathname output will have TAB, LF, double quotes, and backslash characters replaced with \t, \n, \", and \\, respectively, and the pathname will be enclosed in double quotes if any of those replacements occurred.
--name-only
--name-status
--submodule[=<format>]
--color[=<when>]
--no-color
--word-diff[=<mode>]
color
plain
porcelain
none
Note that despite the name of the first mode, color is used to highlight the changed parts in all modes if enabled.
--word-diff-regex=<regex>
Every non-overlapping match of the <regex> is considered a word. Anything between these matches is considered whitespace and ignored(!) for the purposes of finding differences. You may want to append |[^[:space:]] to your regular expression to make sure that it matches all non-whitespace characters. A match that contains a newline is silently truncated(!) at the newline.
The regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration option, see gitattributes(1) or git-config(1). Giving it explicitly overrides any diff driver or configuration setting. Diff drivers override configuration settings.
--color-words[=<regex>]
--no-renames
--check
--full-index
--binary
--abbrev[=<n>]
-B[<n>][/<m>], --break-rewrites[=[<n>][/<m>]]
It affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite of a file not as a series of deletion and insertion mixed together with a very few lines that happen to match textually as the context, but as a single deletion of everything old followed by a single insertion of everything new, and the number m controls this aspect of the -B option (defaults to 60%). -B/70% specifies that less than 30% of the original should remain in the result for Git to consider it a total rewrite (i.e. otherwise the resulting patch will be a series of deletion and insertion mixed together with context lines).
When used with -M, a totally-rewritten file is also considered as the source of a rename (usually -M only considers a file that disappeared as the source of a rename), and the number n controls this aspect of the -B option (defaults to 50%). -B20% specifies that a change with addition and deletion compared to 20% or more of the file’s size are eligible for being picked up as a possible source of a rename to another file.
-M[<n>], --find-renames[=<n>]
-C[<n>], --find-copies[=<n>]
--find-copies-harder
-D, --irreversible-delete
When used together with -B, omit also the preimage in the deletion part of a delete/create pair.
-l<num>
--diff-filter=[(A|C|D|M|R|T|U|X|B)...[*]]
-S<string>
-G<regex>
--pickaxe-all
--pickaxe-regex
-O<orderfile>
-R
--relative[=<path>]
-a, --text
--ignore-space-at-eol
-b, --ignore-space-change
-w, --ignore-all-space
--inter-hunk-context=<lines>
-W, --function-context
--ext-diff
--no-ext-diff
--textconv, --no-textconv
--ignore-submodules[=<when>]
--src-prefix=<prefix>
--dst-prefix=<prefix>
--no-prefix
For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also gitdiffcore(7).
GENERATING PATCHES WITH -P¶
When "git-diff-index", "git-diff-tree", or "git-diff-files" are run with a -p option, "git diff" without the --raw option, or "git log" with the "-p" option, they do not produce the output described above; instead they produce a patch file. You can customize the creation of such patches via the GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF and the GIT_DIFF_OPTS environment variables.
What the -p option produces is slightly different from the traditional diff format:
diff --git a/file1 b/file2
The a/ and b/ filenames are the same unless rename/copy is involved. Especially, even for a creation or a deletion, /dev/null is not used in place of the a/ or b/ filenames.
When rename/copy is involved, file1 and file2 show the name of the source file of the rename/copy and the name of the file that rename/copy produces, respectively.
old mode <mode> new mode <mode> deleted file mode <mode> new file mode <mode> copy from <path> copy to <path> rename from <path> rename to <path> similarity index <number> dissimilarity index <number> index <hash>..<hash> <mode>
File modes are printed as 6-digit octal numbers including the file type and file permission bits.
Path names in extended headers do not include the a/ and b/ prefixes.
The similarity index is the percentage of unchanged lines, and the dissimilarity index is the percentage of changed lines. It is a rounded down integer, followed by a percent sign. The similarity index value of 100% is thus reserved for two equal files, while 100% dissimilarity means that no line from the old file made it into the new one.
The index line includes the SHA-1 checksum before and after the change. The <mode> is included if the file mode does not change; otherwise, separate lines indicate the old and the new mode.
diff --git a/a b/b rename from a rename to b diff --git a/b b/a rename from b rename to a
COMBINED DIFF FORMAT¶
Any diff-generating command can take the ‘-c` or --cc option to produce a combined diff when showing a merge. This is the default format when showing merges with git-diff(1) or git-show(1). Note also that you can give the `-m’ option to any of these commands to force generation of diffs with individual parents of a merge.
A combined diff format looks like this:
diff --combined describe.c index fabadb8,cc95eb0..4866510 --- a/describe.c +++ b/describe.c @@@ -98,20 -98,12 +98,20 @@@
return (a_date > b_date) ? -1 : (a_date == b_date) ? 0 : 1;
} - static void describe(char *arg)
-static void describe(struct commit *cmit, int last_one) ++static void describe(char *arg, int last_one)
{
+ unsigned char sha1[20];
+ struct commit *cmit;
struct commit_list *list;
static int initialized = 0;
struct commit_name *n;
+ if (get_sha1(arg, sha1) < 0)
+ usage(describe_usage);
+ cmit = lookup_commit_reference(sha1);
+ if (!cmit)
+ usage(describe_usage);
+
if (!initialized) {
initialized = 1;
for_each_ref(get_name);
diff --combined file
or like this (when --cc option is used):
diff --cc file
index <hash>,<hash>..<hash> mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode> new file mode <mode> deleted file mode <mode>,<mode>
The mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode> line appears only if at least one of the <mode> is different from the rest. Extended headers with information about detected contents movement (renames and copying detection) are designed to work with diff of two <tree-ish> and are not used by combined diff format.
--- a/file +++ b/file
Similar to two-line header for traditional unified diff format, /dev/null is used to signal created or deleted files.
@@@ <from-file-range> <from-file-range> <to-file-range> @@@
There are (number of parents + 1) @ characters in the chunk header for combined diff format.
Unlike the traditional unified diff format, which shows two files A and B with a single column that has - (minus — appears in A but removed in B), + (plus — missing in A but added to B), or " " (space — unchanged) prefix, this format compares two or more files file1, file2,... with one file X, and shows how X differs from each of fileN. One column for each of fileN is prepended to the output line to note how X’s line is different from it.
A - character in the column N means that the line appears in fileN but it does not appear in the result. A + character in the column N means that the line appears in the result, and fileN does not have that line (in other words, the line was added, from the point of view of that parent).
In the above example output, the function signature was changed from both files (hence two - removals from both file1 and file2, plus ++ to mean one line that was added does not appear in either file1 nor file2). Also eight other lines are the same from file1 but do not appear in file2 (hence prefixed with +).
When shown by git diff-tree -c, it compares the parents of a merge commit with the merge result (i.e. file1..fileN are the parents). When shown by git diff-files -c, it compares the two unresolved merge parents with the working tree file (i.e. file1 is stage 2 aka "our version", file2 is stage 3 aka "their version").
EXAMPLES¶
git log --no-merges
git log v2.6.12.. include/scsi drivers/scsi
git log --since="2 weeks ago" -- gitk
git log --name-status release..test
git log --follow builtin-rev-list.c
git log --branches --not --remotes=origin
git log master --not --remotes=*/master
git log -p -m --first-parent
git log -3
DISCUSSION¶
At the core level, Git is character encoding agnostic.
Although we encourage that the commit log messages are encoded in UTF-8, both the core and Git Porcelain are designed not to force UTF-8 on projects. If all participants of a particular project find it more convenient to use legacy encodings, Git does not forbid it. However, there are a few things to keep in mind.
[i18n]
commitencoding = ISO-8859-1
Commit objects created with the above setting record the value of i18n.commitencoding in its encoding header. This is to help other people who look at them later. Lack of this header implies that the commit log message is encoded in UTF-8.
[i18n]
logoutputencoding = ISO-8859-1
If you do not have this configuration variable, the value of i18n.commitencoding is used instead.
Note that we deliberately chose not to re-code the commit log message when a commit is made to force UTF-8 at the commit object level, because re-coding to UTF-8 is not necessarily a reversible operation.
CONFIGURATION¶
See git-config(1) for core variables and git-diff(1) for settings related to diff generation.
format.pretty
i18n.logOutputEncoding
log.date
log.showroot
mailmap.*
notes.displayRef
May be an unabbreviated ref name or a glob and may be specified multiple times. A warning will be issued for refs that do not exist, but a glob that does not match any refs is silently ignored.
This setting can be disabled by the --no-notes option, overridden by the GIT_NOTES_DISPLAY_REF environment variable, and overridden by the --notes=<ref> option.
GIT¶
Part of the git(1) suite
| 05/23/2023 | Git 1.8.3.1 |