GIT-LOG(1) Git Manual GIT-LOG(1)NAMEgit-log - Show commit logs
SYNOPSISgit-log <option>...
DESCRIPTION
Shows the commit logs.
The command takes options applicable to the git-rev-list(1) command to
control what is shown and how, and options applicable to the
git-diff-tree(1) commands to control how the changes each commit
introduces are shown.
OPTIONS-p Generate patch (see section on generating patches).
-u Synonym for "-p".
-U<n> Shorthand for "--unified=<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".
--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
filename part can be controlled by giving another width to it
separated 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.
--dirstat[=limit]
Output only the sub-directories that are impacted by a diff, and
to what degree they are impacted. You can override the default
cut-off in percent (3) by "--dirstat=limit". If you want to
enable "cumulative" directory statistics, you can use the
"--cumulative" flag, which adds up percentages recursively even
when they have been already reported for a sub-directory.
--summary
Output a condensed summary of extended header information such
as creations, renames and mode changes.
--patch-with-stat
Synonym for "-p --stat".
-z NUL-line termination on output. This affects the --raw output
field terminator. Also output from commands such as "git-log"
will be delimited with NUL between commits.
--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.
--color
Show colored diff.
--no-color
Turn off colored diff, even when the configuration file gives
the default to color output.
--color-words
Show colored word diff, i.e. color words which have changed.
--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
problems are found. Not compatible with --exit-code.
--full-index
Instead of the first handful characters, show full object name
of pre- and post-image blob on the "index" line when generating
a patch format output.
--binary
In addition to --full-index, output "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
handful hexdigits prefix. This is independent of --full-index
option above, which controls the diff-patch output format. Non
default number of digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.
-B Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create.
-M Detect renames.
-C Detect copies as well as renames. See also --find-copies-harder.
--diff-filter=[ACDMRTUXB*]
Select only files that are Added (A), Copied (C), Deleted (D),
Modified (M), Renamed (R), have their type (mode) changed (T),
are Unmerged (U), are Unknown (X), or have had their pairing
Broken (B). Any combination of the filter characters may 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.
--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>
-M and -C options require O(n^2) processing time where n is the
number of potential rename/copy targets. This option prevents
rename/copy detection from running if the number of rename/copy
targets exceeds the specified number.
-S<string>
Look for differences that contain the change in <string>.
--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
relative 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.
--text Treat all files as text.
-a Shorthand for "--text".
--ignore-space-at-eol
Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
--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.
-b Shorthand for "--ignore-space-change".
--ignore-all-space
Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences
even if one line has whitespace where the other line has none.
-w Shorthand for "--ignore-all-space".
--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
differences.
--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.
--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
[1]diffcore documentation.
-<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 "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section in
git-rev-parse(1).
--decorate
Print out the ref names of any commits that are shown.
--full-diff
Without this flag, "git log -p <paths>..." 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 "<paths>..." limits only
commits, and doesn't limit diff for those commits.
--follow
Continue listing the history of a file beyond renames.
--log-size
Before the log message print out its size in bytes. Intended
mainly for porcelain tools consumption. If git is unable to
produce 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.
<paths>...
Show only commits that affect the specified paths.
Commit Formatting
--pretty[=<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>. When omitted, the format
defaults to medium.
Note: you can specify the default pretty format in the
repository configuration (see git-config(1)).
--abbrev-commit
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object
name, show only handful hexdigits 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.
--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
preferred by the user. For non plumbing commands this defaults
to UTF-8.
--relative-date
Synonym for --date=relative.
--date={relative,local,default,iso,rfc,short}
Only takes effect for dates shown in human-readable format, such
as when using "--pretty".
--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=default shows timestamps in the original timezone (either
committer's or author's).
--header
Print the contents of the commit in raw-format; each record is
separated with a NUL character.
--parents
Print the parents of the commit.
--timestamp
Print the raw commit timestamp.
--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:
y---b---b branch B
/ \ /
/ .
/ / \
o---x---a---a branch A
you would get an output line 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
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 This flag changes the way a merge commit is displayed. It shows
the differences from each of the parents to the merge result
simultaneously 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 hunks that show differences from only
one parent, or show the same change from all but one parent for
an Octopus merge.
-r Show recursive diffs.
-t Show the tree objects in the diff output. This implies -r.
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.
-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).
-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
expressions 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.
--full-history
Show also parts of history irrelevant to current state of a
given path. This turns off history simplification, which removed
merges which didn't change anything at all at some child. It
will still actually simplify away merges that didn't change
anything at all into either child.
--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
evolution 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
individual 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 $GIT_DIR/refs/ are listed on the
command line as <commit>.
--stdin
In addition to the <commit> listed on the command line, read
them from the standard input.
--quiet
Don't print anything to standard output. This form is primarily
meant to allow the caller to test the exit status to see if a
range of objects is fully connected (or not). It is faster than
redirecting stdout to /dev/null as the output does not have to
be formatted.
--cherry-pick
Omit any commit that introduces the same change as another
commit 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 in the output. When the starting commit is
specified as instead. Under --pretty=oneline, the commit message
is prefixed with this information on the same line.
Cannot be combined with --reverse. See also git-reflog(1).
--merge
After a failed merge, show refs that touch files having a
conflict and don't exist on all heads to merge.
--boundary
Output uninteresting commits at the boundary, which are usually
not shown.
--dense, --sparse
When optional paths are given, the default behaviour (--dense)
is to only output commits that changes at least one of them, and
also ignore merges that do not touch the given paths.
Use the --sparse flag to makes the command output all eligible
commits (still subject to count and age limitation), but apply
merge simplification nevertheless.
Commit Ordering
By default, the commits are shown in reverse chronological order.
--topo-order
This option makes them appear in topological order (i.e.
descendant commits are shown before their parents).
--date-order
This option is similar to --topo-order in the sense that no
parent 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
commits. --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.
--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
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.
Here are some additional details for each format:
· oneline
<sha1> <title line>
This is designed to be as compact as possible.
· short
commit <sha1>
Author: <author>
<title line>
· medium
commit <sha1>
Author: <author>
Date: <date>
<title line>
<full commit message>
· full
commit <sha1>
Author: <author>
Commit: <committer>
<title line>
<full commit message>
· fuller
commit <sha1>
Author: <author>
AuthorDate: <date & time>
Commit: <committer>
CommitDate: <date & time>
<title line>
<full commit message>
· email
From <sha1> <date>
From: <author>
Date: <date & time>
Subject: [PATCH] <title line>
<full commit message>
· raw
The raw format shows the entire commit exactly as stored in the
commit 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
simplification into account.
· format:
The format: 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:
· %H: commit hash
· %h: abbreviated commit hash
· %T: tree hash
· %t: abbreviated tree hash
· %P: parent hashes
· %p: abbreviated parent hashes
· %an: author name
· %ae: author email
· %ad: author date
· %aD: author date, RFC2822 style
· %ar: author date, relative
· %at: author date, UNIX timestamp
· %ai: author date, ISO 8601 format
· %cn: committer name
· %ce: committer email
· %cd: committer date
· %cD: committer date, RFC2822 style
· %cr: committer date, relative
· %ct: committer date, UNIX timestamp
· %ci: committer date, ISO 8601 format
· %e: encoding
· %s: subject
· %b: body
· %Cred: switch color to red
· %Cgreen: switch color to green
· %Cblue: switch color to blue
· %Creset: reset color
· %m: left, right or boundary mark
· %n: newline
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.
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 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>
3. TAB, LF, double quote and backslash characters in pathnames are
represented as \t, \n, \" and \\, respectively. If there is need for
such substitution then the whole pathname is put in double quotes.
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.
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. 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);
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 --c 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
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.
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 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 last file, 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 two 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
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
present name.
DISCUSSION
At the core level, git is character encoding agnostic.
· 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
translation.
· The contents of the blob objects are uninterpreted sequence of
bytes. There is no encoding translation at the core level.
· The commit log messages are uninterpreted sequence 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-tree (hence, git-commit which uses it) 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:
[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.
2. git-log, git-show and friends looks at the encoding header of a
commit object, and tries 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:
[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.
AUTHOR
Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
DOCUMENTATION
Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list
<git@vger.kernel.org>.
GIT
Part of the git(7) suite
REFERENCES
1. diffcore documentation
diffcore.html
Git 1.5.5.2 10/21/2008 GIT-LOG(1)