GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)NAMEgit-log - Show commit logs
SYNOPSIS
git log [<options>] [<since>..<until>] [[--] <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
-<n> Limits the number of commits to show.
<since>..<until>
Show only commits between the named two commits. When either
<since> or <until> is omitted, it defaults to HEAD, i.e. the tip
of the current branch. For a more complete list of ways to spell
<since> and <until>, see gitrevisions(7).
--follow
Continue listing the history of a file beyond renames (works
only for a single file).
--no-decorate, --decorate[=short|full|no]
Print out the ref names of any commits that are shown. If short
is specified, the ref name prefixes refs/heads/, refs/tags/ and
refs/remotes/ will not be printed. If full is specified, the
full ref name (including prefix) will be printed. The default
option is short.
--source
Print out the ref name given on the command line by which each
commit was reached.
--full-diff
Without this flag, "git log -p <path>..." shows commits that
touch the specified paths, and diffs about the same specified
paths. With this, the full diff is shown for commits that touch
the specified paths; this means that "<path>..." limits only
commits, and doesn’t limit diff for those commits.
Note that this affects all diff-based output types, e.g. those
produced by --stat etc.
1
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)--log-size
Before the log message print out its size in bytes. Intended
mainly for porcelain tools consumption. If git is unable to pro-
duce a valid value size is set to zero. Note that only message
is considered, if also a diff is shown its size is not included.
[--] <path>...
Show only commits that affect any of the specified paths. To
prevent confusion with options and branch names, paths may need
to be prefixed with "-- " to separate them from options or ref-
names.
Common diff options
-p, -u, --patch
Generate patch (see section on generating patches).
-U<n>, --unified=<n>
Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of the usual
three. Implies -p.
--raw Generate the raw format.
--patch-with-raw
Synonym for -p --raw.
--patience
Generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.
--stat[=<width>[,<name-width>]]
Generate a diffstat. You can override the default output width
for 80-column terminal by --stat=<width>. The width of the file-
name part can be controlled by giving another width to it sepa-
rated by a comma.
--numstat
Similar to \--stat, but shows number of added and deleted lines
in decimal notation and pathname without abbreviation, to make
it more machine friendly. For binary files, outputs two -
instead of saying 0 0.
--shortstat
Output only the last line of the --stat format containing total
number of modified files, as well as number of added and deleted
lines.
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GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
--dirstat[=<limit>]
Output the distribution of relative amount of changes (number of
lines added or removed) for each sub-directory. Directories with
changes below a cut-off percent (3% by default) are not shown.
The cut-off percent can be set with --dirstat=<limit>. Changes
in a child directory are not counted for the parent directory,
unless --cumulative is used.
--dirstat-by-file[=<limit>]
Same as --dirstat, but counts changed files instead of lines.
--summary
Output a condensed summary of extended header information such
as creations, renames and mode changes.
--patch-with-stat
Synonym for -p --stat.
-z Separate the commits with NULs instead of with new newlines.
Also, when --raw or --numstat has been given, do not munge path-
names 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
Show only names of changed files.
--name-status
Show only names and status of changed files. See the description
of the --diff-filter option on what the status letters mean.
--submodule[=<format>]
Chose the output format for submodule differences. <format> can
be one of short and log. short just shows pairs of commit names,
this format is used when this option is not given. log is the
default value for this option and lists the commits in that com-
mit range like the summary option of git-submodule(1) does.
--color[=<when>]
Show colored diff. The value must be always (the default),
never, or auto.
3
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)--no-color
Turn off colored diff, even when the configuration file gives
the default to color output. Same as --color=never.
--word-diff[=<mode>]
Show a word diff, using the <mode> to delimit changed words. By
default, words are delimited by whitespace; see
--word-diff-regex below. The <mode> defaults to plain, and must
be one of:
color Highlight changed words using only colors. Implies
--color.
plain Show words as [-removed-] and {+added+}. Makes no
attempts to escape the delimiters if they appear in the
input, so the output may be ambiguous.
porcelain
Use a special line-based format intended for script con-
sumption. Added/removed/unchanged runs are printed in the
usual unified diff format, starting with a +/-/` ` char-
acter at the beginning of the line and extending to the
end of the line. Newlines in the input are represented by
a tilde ~ on a line of its own.
none Disable word diff again.
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>
Use <regex> to decide what a word is, instead of considering
runs of non-whitespace to be a word. Also implies --word-diff
unless it was already enabled.
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 con-
tains 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 explic-
itly overrides any diff driver or configuration setting. Diff
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GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
drivers override configuration settings.
--color-words[=<regex>]
Equivalent to --word-diff=color plus (if a regex was specified)
--word-diff-regex=<regex>.
--no-renames
Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration file
gives the default to do so.
--check
Warn if changes introduce trailing whitespace or an indent that
uses a space before a tab. Exits with non-zero status if prob-
lems are found. Not compatible with --exit-code.
--full-index
Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full pre-
and post-image blob object names on the "index" line when gener-
ating patch format output.
--binary
In addition to --full-index, output a binary diff that can be
applied with git-apply.
--abbrev[=<n>]
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name in
diff-raw format output and diff-tree header lines, show only a
partial prefix. This is independent of the --full-index option
above, which controls the diff-patch output format. Non default
number of digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.
-B[<n>][/<m>]
Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create.
This serves two purposes:
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 con-
text, 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
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GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
as the source of a rename (usually -M only considers a file that
disappeared as the source of a rename), and the number n con-
trols 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>]
If generating diffs, detect and report renames for each commit.
For following files across renames while traversing history, see
--follow. If n is specified, it is a is a threshold on the simi-
larity index (i.e. amount of addition/deletions compared to the
file’s size). For example, -M90% means git should consider
a delete/add pair to be a rename if more than 90% of the file
hasn’t changed.
-C[<n>]
Detect copies as well as renames. See also --find-copies-harder.
If n is specified, it has the same meaning as for -M<n>.
--find-copies-harder
For performance reasons, by default, -C option finds copies only
if the original file of the copy was modified in the same
changeset. This flag makes the command inspect unmodified files
as candidates for the source of copy. This is a very expensive
operation for large projects, so use it with caution. Giving
more than one -C option has the same effect.
-l<num>
The -M and -C options require O(n^2) processing time where n is
the number of potential rename/copy targets. This option pre-
vents rename/copy detection from running if the number of
rename/copy targets exceeds the specified number.
--diff-filter=[(A|C|D|M|R|T|U|X|B)...[*]]
Select only files that are Added (A), Copied (C), Deleted (D),
Modified (M), Renamed (R), have their type (i.e. regular file,
symlink, submodule, ...) changed (T), are Unmerged (U), are
Unknown (X), or have had their pairing Broken (B). Any combina-
tion of the filter characters (including none) can be used. When
* (All-or-none) is added to the combination, all paths are
selected if there is any file that matches other criteria in the
comparison; if there is no file that matches other criteria,
nothing is selected.
-S<string>
Look for differences that introduce or remove an instance of
<string>. Note that this is different than the string simply
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GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
appearing in diff output; see the pickaxe entry in gitdiff-
core(7) for more details.
--pickaxe-all
When -S finds a change, show all the changes in that changeset,
not just the files that contain the change in <string>.
--pickaxe-regex
Make the <string> not a plain string but an extended POSIX regex
to match.
-O<orderfile>
Output the patch in the order specified in the <orderfile>,
which has one shell glob pattern per line.
-R Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or on-disk
file to tree contents.
--relative[=<path>]
When run from a subdirectory of the project, it can be told to
exclude changes outside the directory and show pathnames rela-
tive to it with this option. When you are not in a subdirectory
(e.g. in a bare repository), you can name which subdirectory to
make the output relative to by giving a <path> as an argument.
-a, --text
Treat all files as text.
--ignore-space-at-eol
Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
-b, --ignore-space-change
Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace
at line end, and considers all other sequences of one or more
whitespace characters to be equivalent.
-w, --ignore-all-space
Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences
even if one line has whitespace where the other line has none.
--inter-hunk-context=<lines>
Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified number
of lines, thereby fusing hunks that are close to each other.
7
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)--exit-code
Make the program exit with codes similar to diff(1). That is, it
exits with 1 if there were differences and 0 means no differ-
ences.
--quiet
Disable all output of the program. Implies --exit-code.
--ext-diff
Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set an
external diff driver with gitattributes(5), you need to use this
option with git-log(1) and friends.
--no-ext-diff
Disallow external diff drivers.
--ignore-submodules[=<when>]
Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation. <when> can
be either "none", "untracked", "dirty" or "all", which is the
default Using "none" will consider the submodule modified when
it either contains untracked or modified files or its HEAD dif-
fers from the commit recorded in the superproject and can be
used to override any settings of the ignore option in git-con-
fig(1) or gitmodules(5). When "untracked" is used submodules are
not considered dirty when they only contain untracked content
(but they are still scanned for modified content). Using "dirty"
ignores all changes to the work tree of submodules, only changes
to the commits stored in the superproject are shown (this was
the behavior until 1.7.0). Using "all" hides all changes to sub-
modules.
--src-prefix=<prefix>
Show the given source prefix instead of "a/".
--dst-prefix=<prefix>
Show the given destination prefix instead of "b/".
--no-prefix
Do not show any source or destination prefix.
For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also
gitdiffcore(7).
Commit Formatting
8
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
--pretty[=<format>], --format=<format>
Pretty-print the contents of the commit logs in a given format,
where <format> can be one of oneline, short, medium, full,
fuller, email, raw and format:<string>. See the "PRETTY FORMATS"
section for some additional details for each format. When omit-
ted, the format defaults to medium.
Note: you can specify the default pretty format in the reposi-
tory configuration (see git-config(1)).
--abbrev-commit
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object
name, show only a partial prefix. Non default number of digits
can be specified with "--abbrev=<n>" (which also modifies diff
output, if it is displayed).
This should make "--pretty=oneline" a whole lot more readable
for people using 80-column terminals.
--oneline
This is a shorthand for "--pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit" used
together.
--encoding[=<encoding>]
The commit objects record the encoding used for the log message
in their encoding header; this option can be used to tell the
command to re-code the commit log message in the encoding pre-
ferred by the user. For non plumbing commands this defaults to
UTF-8.
--no-notes, --show-notes[=<ref>]
Show the notes (see git-notes(1)) that annotate the commit, when
showing the commit log message. This is the default for git log,
git show and git whatchanged commands when there is no --pretty,
--format nor --oneline option is given on the command line.
With an optional argument, add this ref to the list of notes.
The ref is taken to be in refs/notes/ if it is not qualified.
--[no-]standard-notes
Enable or disable populating the notes ref list from the
core.notesRef and notes.displayRef variables (or corresponding
environment overrides). Enabled by default. See git-config(1).
--relative-date
Synonym for --date=relative.
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GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
--date=(relative|local|default|iso|rfc|short|raw)
Only takes effect for dates shown in human-readable format, such
as when using "--pretty". log.date config variable sets a
default value for log command’s --date option.
--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 for-
mat.
--date=rfc (or --date=rfc2822) shows timestamps in RFC 2822 for-
mat, 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
Print also the parents of the commit (in the form "commit par-
ent..."). Also enables parent rewriting, see History Simplifica-
tion below.
--children
Print also the children of the commit (in the form "commit
child..."). Also enables parent rewriting, see History Simplifi-
cation below.
--left-right
Mark which side of a symmetric diff a commit is reachable from.
Commits from the left side are prefixed with < and those from
the right with >. If combined with --boundary, those commits are
prefixed with -.
For example, if you have this topology:
.ft C
y---b---b branch B
/ \ /
/ .
/ / \
o---x---a---a branch A
10
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
.ft
you would get an output like this:
.ft C
$ 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
.ft
--graph
Draw a text-based graphical representation of the commit history
on the left hand side of the output. This may cause extra lines
to be printed in between commits, in order for the graph history
to be drawn properly.
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 With this option, diff output for a merge commit shows the dif-
ferences from each of the parents to the merge result simultane-
ously instead of showing pairwise diff between a parent and the
result one at a time. Furthermore, it lists only files which
were modified from all parents.
--cc This flag implies the -c options and further compresses the
patch output by omitting uninteresting hunks whose contents in
the parents have only two variants and the merge result picks
one of them without modification.
-m This flag makes the merge commits show the full diff like regu-
lar commits; for each merge parent, a separate log entry and
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diff is generated. An exception is that only diff against the
first parent is shown when --first-parent option is given; in
that case, the output represents the changes the merge brought
into the then-current branch.
-r Show recursive diffs.
-t Show the tree objects in the diff output. This implies -r.
-s Suppress diff output.
Commit Limiting
Besides specifying a range of commits that should be listed using the
special notations explained in the description, additional commit lim-
iting may be applied.
-n number, --max-count=<number>
Limit the number of commits output.
--skip=<number>
Skip number commits before starting to show the commit output.
--since=<date>, --after=<date>
Show commits more recent than a specific date.
--until=<date>, --before=<date>
Show commits older than a specific date.
--author=<pattern>, --committer=<pattern>
Limit the commits output to ones with author/committer header
lines that match the specified pattern (regular expression).
--grep=<pattern>
Limit the commits output to ones with log message that matches
the specified pattern (regular expression).
--all-match
Limit the commits output to ones that match all given --grep,
--author and --committer instead of ones that match at least
one.
12
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)-i, --regexp-ignore-case
Match the regexp limiting patterns without regard to letters
case.
-E, --extended-regexp
Consider the limiting patterns to be extended regular expres-
sions instead of the default basic regular expressions.
-F, --fixed-strings
Consider the limiting patterns to be fixed strings (don’t
interpret pattern as a regular expression).
--remove-empty
Stop when a given path disappears from the tree.
--merges
Print only merge commits.
--no-merges
Do not print commits with more than one parent.
--first-parent
Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit.
This option can give a better overview when viewing the evolu-
tion of a particular topic branch, because merges into a topic
branch tend to be only about adjusting to updated upstream from
time to time, and this option allows you to ignore the individ-
ual commits brought in to your history by such a merge.
--not Reverses the meaning of the ^ prefix (or lack thereof) for all
following revision specifiers, up to the next --not.
--all Pretend as if all the refs in refs/ are listed on the command
line as <commit>.
--branches[=<pattern>]
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/heads are listed on the com-
mand line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit branches to
ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, , or [, / at
the end is implied.
--tags[=<pattern>]
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/tags are listed on the com-
mand line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit tags to ones
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GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, , or [, / at the
end is implied.
--remotes[=<pattern>]
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/remotes are listed on the
command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit remote
tracking branches to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern
lacks ?, , or [, / at the end is implied.
--glob=<glob-pattern>
Pretend as if all the refs matching shell glob <glob-pattern>
are listed on the command line as <commit>. Leading refs/, is
automatically prepended if missing. If pattern lacks ?, , or [,
/ at the end is implied.
--bisect
Pretend as if the bad bisection ref refs/bisect/bad was listed
and as if it was followed by --not and the good bisection refs
refs/bisect/good-* on the command line.
--stdin
In addition to the <commit> listed on the command line, read
them from the standard input. If a -- separator is seen, stop
reading commits and start reading paths to limit the result.
--cherry-pick
Omit any commit that introduces the same change as another com-
mit on the "other side" when the set of commits are limited with
symmetric difference.
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,
like the example above in the description of that 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.
-g, --walk-reflogs
Instead of walking the commit ancestry chain, walk reflog
entries from the most recent one to older ones. When this option
is used you cannot specify commits to exclude (that is, ^commit,
commit1..commit2, nor commit1...commit2 notations cannot be
used).
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
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GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
in the output. When the starting commit is specified as com-
mit@{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
After a failed merge, show refs that touch files having a con-
flict and don’t exist on all heads to merge.
--boundary
Output uninteresting commits at the boundary, which are usually
not shown.
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 his-
tory.
The following options select the commits to be shown:
<paths>
Commits modifying the given <paths> are selected.
--simplify-by-decoration
Commits that are referred by some branch or tag are selected.
Note that extra commits can be shown to give a meaningful his-
tory.
The following options affect the way the simplification is per-
formed:
Default mode
Simplifies the history to the simplest history explaining the
final state of the tree. Simplest because it prunes some side
branches if the end result is the same (i.e. merging branches
with the same content)
--full-history
As the default mode but does not prune some history.
15
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)--dense
Only the selected commits are shown, plus some to have a mean-
ingful history.
--sparse
All commits in the simplified history are shown.
--simplify-merges
Additional option to --full-history to remove some needless
merges from the resulting history, as there are no selected com-
mits contributing to this merge.
--ancestry-path
When given a range of commits to display (e.g. commit1..commit2
or commit2 ^commit1), only display commits that exist directly
on the ancestry chain between the commit1 and commit2, i.e. com-
mits that are both descendants of commit1, and ancestors of com-
mit2.
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 his-
tory to illustrate the differences between simplification set-
tings. We assume that you are filtering for a file foo in this
commit graph:
.ft C
.-A---M---N---O---P
/ / / / /
I B C D E
\ / / / /
`-------------'
.ft
The horizontal line of history A--P is taken to be the first
parent of each merge. The commits are:
o I is the initial commit, in which foo exists with contents "asdf",
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GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
and a file quux exists with contents "quux". Initial commits are
compared to an empty tree, so I is !TREESAME.
o In A, foo contains just "foo".
o B contains the same change as A. Its merge M is trivial and hence
TREESAME to all parents.
o C does not change foo, but its merge N changes it to "foobar", so
it is not TREESAME to any parent.
o D sets foo to "baz". Its merge O combines the strings from N and D
to "foobarbaz"; i.e., it is not TREESAME to any parent.
o E changes quux to "xyzzy", and its merge P combines the strings to
"quux xyzzy". Despite appearing interesting, P is TREESAME to all
parents.
rev-list walks backwards through history, including or excluding com-
mits based on whether --full-history and/or parent rewriting (via
--parents or --children) are used. The following settings are avail-
able.
Default mode
Commits are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent
(though this can be changed, see --sparse below). If the commit
was a merge, and it was TREESAME to one parent, follow only that
parent. (Even if there are several TREESAME parents, follow only
one of them.) Otherwise, follow all parents.
This results in:
.ft C
.-A---N---O
/ / /
I---------D
.ft
Note how the rule to only follow the TREESAME parent, if one is
available, removed B from consideration entirely. C was consid-
ered 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.
17
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)--full-history without parent rewriting
This mode differs from the default in one point: always follow
all parents of a merge, even if it is TREESAME to one of them.
Even if more than one side of the merge has commits that are
included, this does not imply that the merge itself is! In the
example, we get
.ft C
I A B N D O
.ft
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
Ordinary commits are only included if they are !TREESAME (though
this can be changed, see --sparse below).
Merges are always included. However, their parent list is
rewritten: Along each parent, prune away commits that are not
included themselves. This results in
.ft C
.-A---M---N---O---P
/ / / / /
I B / D /
\ / / / /
`-------------'
.ft
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:
18
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)--dense
Commits that are walked are included if they are not TREESAME to
any parent.
--sparse
All commits that are walked are included.
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
First, build a history graph in the same way that --full-history
with parent rewriting does (see above).
Then simplify each commit C to its replacement C' in the final
history according to the following rules:
o Set C' to C.
o Replace each parent P of C' with its simplification P'. In
the process, drop parents that are ancestors of other par-
ents, and remove duplicates.
o If after this parent rewriting, C' is a root or merge commit
(has zero or >1 parents), a boundary commit, or !TREESAME, it
remains. Otherwise, it is replaced with its only parent.
The effect of this is best shown by way of comparing to
--full-history with parent rewriting. The example turns into:
.ft C
.-A---M---N---O
/ / /
I B D
\ / /
`---------'
.ft
Note the major differences in N and P over --full-history:
o N's parent list had I removed, because it is an ancestor of
the other parent M. Still, N remained because it is
!TREESAME.
19
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
o P's parent list similarly had I removed. P was then removed
completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME.
Finally, there is a fifth simplification mode available:
--ancestry-path
Limit the displayed commits to those directly on the ancestry
chain between the "from" and "to" commits in the given commit
range. I.e. only display commits that are ancestor of the "to"
commit, and descendants of the "from" commit.
As an example use case, consider the following commit history:
.ft C
D---E-------F
/ \ \
B---C---G---H---I---J
/ \
A-------K---------------L--M
.ft
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 --ances-
try-path option does. Applied to the D..M range, it results in:
.ft C
E-------F
\ \
G---H---I---J
\
L--M
.ft
20
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
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.
--topo-order
This option makes them appear in topological order (i.e. descen-
dant commits are shown before their parents).
--date-order
This option is similar to --topo-order in the sense that no par-
ent comes before all of its children, but otherwise things are
still ordered in the commit timestamp order.
--reverse
Output the commits in reverse order. Cannot be combined with
--walk-reflogs.
Object Traversal
These options are mostly targeted for packing of git repositories.
--objects
Print the object IDs of any object referenced by the listed com-
mits. --objects foo ^bar thus means "send me all object IDs
which I need to download if I have the commit object bar, but
not foo".
--objects-edge
Similar to --objects, but also print the IDs of excluded commits
prefixed with a "-" character. This is used by
git-pack-objects(1) to build "thin" pack, which records objects
in deltified form based on objects contained in these excluded
commits to reduce network traffic.
--unpacked
Only useful with --objects; print the object IDs that are not in
packs.
21
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)--no-walk
Only show the given revs, but do not traverse their ancestors.
--do-walk
Overrides a previous --no-walk.
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 nec-
essarily 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 for-
mats 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:
o oneline
<sha1> <title line>
This is designed to be as compact as possible.
o short
commit <sha1>
Author: <author>
<title line>
o medium
commit <sha1>
Author: <author>
Date: <author date>
<title line>
<full commit message>
o full
commit <sha1>
Author: <author>
Commit: <committer>
<title line>
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GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
<full commit message>
o fuller
commit <sha1>
Author: <author>
AuthorDate: <author date>
Commit: <committer>
CommitDate: <committer date>
<title line>
<full commit message>
o email
From <sha1> <date>
From: <author>
Date: <author date>
Subject: [PATCH] <title line>
<full commit message>
o raw
The raw format shows the entire commit exactly as stored in the com-
mit object. Notably, the SHA1s 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 sim-
plification into account.
o format:<string>
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:
.ft C
The author of fe6e0ee was Junio C Hamano, 23 hours ago
The title was >>t4119: test autocomputing -p<n> for traditional diff input.<<
.ft
The placeholders are:
o %H: commit hash
23
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
o %h: abbreviated commit hash
o %T: tree hash
o %t: abbreviated tree hash
o %P: parent hashes
o %p: abbreviated parent hashes
o %an: author name
o %aN: author name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or
git-blame(1))
o %ae: author email
o %aE: author email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or
git-blame(1))
o %ad: author date (format respects --date= option)
o %aD: author date, RFC2822 style
o %ar: author date, relative
o %at: author date, UNIX timestamp
o %ai: author date, ISO 8601 format
o %cn: committer name
o %cN: committer name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or
git-blame(1))
o %ce: committer email
o %cE: committer email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1)
or git-blame(1))
o %cd: committer date
o %cD: committer date, RFC2822 style
o %cr: committer date, relative
o %ct: committer date, UNIX timestamp
o %ci: committer date, ISO 8601 format
o %d: ref names, like the --decorate option of git-log(1)
o %e: encoding
24
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
o %s: subject
o %f: sanitized subject line, suitable for a filename
o %b: body
o %B: raw body (unwrapped subject and body)
o %N: commit notes
o %gD: reflog selector, e.g., refs/stash@\{1\}
o %gd: shortened reflog selector, e.g., stash@\{1\}
o %gs: reflog subject
o %Cred: switch color to red
o %Cgreen: switch color to green
o %Cblue: switch color to blue
o %Creset: reset color
o %C(...): color specification, as described in color.branch.*
config option
o %m: left, right or boundary mark
o %n: newline
o %%: a raw %
o %x00: print a byte from a hex code
o %w([<w>[,<i1>[,<i2>]]]): switch line wrapping, like the -w
option of git-shortlog(1).
Note
Some placeholders may depend on other options given to the revi-
sion 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.
25
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
If you add a {plus} (plus sign) after % of a placeholder, a line-feed
is inserted immediately before the expansion if and only if the place-
holder 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 place-
holder 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.
o tformat:
The tformat: format works exactly like format:, except that it pro-
vides "terminator" semantics instead of "separator" semantics. In
other words, each commit has the message terminator character (usu-
ally 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:
.ft C
$ 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
.ft
In addition, any unrecognized string that has a % in it is inter-
preted as if it has tformat: in front of it. For example, these two
are equivalent:
.ft C
$ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef
$ git log -2 --pretty=%h 4da45bef
.ft
26
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)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 environ-
ment variables.
What the -p option produces is slightly different from the traditional
diff format:
1. It is preceded with a "git diff" header that looks like this:
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.
2. It is followed by one or more extended header lines:
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/ pre-
fixes.
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;
27
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
otherwise, separate lines indicate the old and the new mode.
3. TAB, LF, double quote and backslash characters in pathnames are rep-
resented as \t, \n, \" and \\, respectively. If there is need for
such substitution then the whole pathname is put in double quotes.
4. All the file1 files in the output refer to files before the commit,
and all the file2 files refer to files after the commit. It is
incorrect to apply each change to each file sequentially. For exam-
ple, this patch will swap a and b:
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
"git-diff-tree", "git-diff-files" and "git-diff" can take -c or --cc
option to produce combined diff. For showing a merge commit with "git
log -p", this is the default format; you can force showing full diff
with the -m option. A combined diff format looks like this:
.ft C
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) {
28
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
initialized = 1;
for_each_ref(get_name);
.ft
1. It is preceded with a "git diff" header, that looks like this (when
-c option is used):
diff --combined file
or like this (when --cc option is used):
diff --cc file
2. It is followed by one or more extended header lines (this example
shows a merge with two parents):
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 infor-
mation about detected contents movement (renames and copying detec-
tion) are designed to work with diff of two <tree-ish> and are not
used by combined diff format.
3. It is followed by two-line from-file/to-file header
--- a/file
+++ b/file
Similar to two-line header for traditional unified diff format,
/dev/null is used to signal created or deleted files.
4. Chunk header format is modified to prevent people from accidentally
feeding it to patch -p1. Combined diff format was created for review
of merge commit changes, and was not meant for apply. The change is
similar to the change in the extended index header:
@@@ <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
29
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
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 {plus}).
When shown by git diff-tree -c, it compares the parents of a merge com-
mit with the merge result (i.e. file1..fileN are the parents). When
shown by git diff-files -c, it compares the two unresolved merge par-
ents with the working tree file (i.e. file1 is stage 2 aka "our ver-
sion", file2 is stage 3 aka "their version").
EXAMPLES
git log --no-merges
Show the whole commit history, but skip any merges
git log v2.6.12.. include/scsi drivers/scsi
Show all commits since version v2.6.12 that changed any file in
the include/scsi or drivers/scsi subdirectories
git log --since="2 weeks ago" -- gitk
Show the changes during the last two weeks to the file gitk. The
"--" is necessary to avoid confusion with the branch named gitk
git log --name-status release..test
Show the commits that are in the "test" branch but not yet in
the "release" branch, along with the list of paths each commit
modifies.
git log --follow builtin-rev-list.c
Shows the commits that changed builtin-rev-list.c, including
those commits that occurred before the file was given its pre-
sent name.
30
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
git log --branches --not --remotes=origin
Shows all commits that are in any of local branches but not in
any of remote tracking branches for origin (what you have that
origin doesn’t).
git log master --not --remotes=*/master
Shows all commits that are in local master but not in any remote
repository master branches.
git log -p -m --first-parent
Shows the history including change diffs, but only from the
"main branch" perspective, skipping commits that come from
merged branches, and showing full diffs of changes introduced by
the merges. This makes sense only when following a strict policy
of merging all topic branches when staying on a single integra-
tion branch.
DISCUSSION
At the core level, git is character encoding agnostic.
o The pathnames recorded in the index and in the tree objects are
treated as uninterpreted sequences of non-NUL bytes. What readdir(2)
returns are what are recorded and compared with the data git keeps
track of, which in turn are expected to be what lstat(2) and
creat(2) accepts. There is no such thing as pathname encoding trans-
lation.
o The contents of the blob objects are uninterpreted sequences of
bytes. There is no encoding translation at the core level.
o The commit log messages are uninterpreted sequences of non-NUL
bytes.
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.
1. git commit and git commit-tree issues a warning if the commit log
message given to it does not look like a valid UTF-8 string, unless
you explicitly say your project uses a legacy encoding. The way to
say this is to have i18n.commitencoding in .git/config file, like
this:
31
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
.ft C
[i18n]
commitencoding = ISO-8859-1
.ft
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.
2. git log, git show, git blame and friends look at the encoding
header of a commit object, and try to re-code the log message into
UTF-8 unless otherwise specified. You can specify the desired output
encoding with i18n.logoutputencoding in .git/config file, like this:
.ft C
[i18n]
logoutputencoding = ISO-8859-1
.ft
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
Default for the --format option. (See "PRETTY FORMATS" above.)
Defaults to "medium".
i18n.logOutputEncoding
Encoding to use when displaying logs. (See "Discussion", above.)
Defaults to the value of i18n.commitEncoding if set, UTF-8 oth-
erwise.
log.date
Default format for human-readable dates. (Compare the --date
option.) Defaults to "default", which means to write dates like
32
GIT-LOG(1)GIT-LOG(1)
Sat May 8 19:35:34 2010 -0500.
log.showroot
If false, git log and related commands will not treat the ini-
tial commit as a big creation event. Any root commits in git log
-p output would be shown without a diff attached. The default is
true.
mailmap.file
See git-shortlog(1).
notes.displayRef
Which refs, in addition to the default set by core.notesRef or
GIT_NOTES_REF, to read notes from when showing commit messages
with the log family of commands. See git-notes(1).
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-standard-notes option,
overridden by the GIT_NOTES_DISPLAY_REF environment variable,
and supplemented by the --show-notes option.
AUTHOR
Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org: mailto:torvalds@osdl.org>
DOCUMENTATION
Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list
<git@vger.kernel.org: mailto:git@vger.kernel.org>.
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
33
