Git

Browsing the history

Syntax#

  • git log [options] [revision range] [[—] path…]

Parameters#

Parameter           Explanation
-q, —quiet Quiet, suppresses diff output
—source Shows source of commit
—use-mailmap Use mail map file (changes user info for committing user)
—decorate[=…] Decorate options
—L <n,m:file> Show log for specific range of lines in a file, counting from 1. Starts from line n, goes to line m. Also shows diff.
—show-signature Display signatures of signed commits
-i, —regexp-ignore-case Match the regular expression limiting patterns without regard to letter case
## Remarks#
References and up-to-date documentation : git-log official documentation

“Regular” Git Log

git log

will display all your commits with the author and hash. This will be shown over multiple lines per commit. (If you wish to show a single line per commit, look at onelineing). Use the q key to exit the log.

By default, with no arguments, git log lists the commits made in that repository in reverse chronological order – that is, the most recent commits show up first. As you can see, this command lists each commit with its SHA-1 checksum, the author’s name and email, the date written, and the commit message. - source

Example (from Free Code Camp repository):

commit 87ef97f59e2a2f4dc425982f76f14a57d0900bcf
Merge: e50ff0d eb8b729
Author: Brian <sludge256@users.noreply.github.com>
Date:   Thu Mar 24 15:52:07 2016 -0700

    Merge pull request #7724 from BKinahan/fix/where-art-thou
    
    Fix 'its' typo in Where Art Thou description

commit eb8b7298d516ea20a4aadb9797c7b6fd5af27ea5
Author: BKinahan <b.kinahan@gmail.com>
Date:   Thu Mar 24 21:11:36 2016 +0000

    Fix 'its' typo in Where Art Thou description

commit e50ff0d249705f41f55cd435f317dcfd02590ee7
Merge: 6b01875 2652d04
Author: Mrugesh Mohapatra <raisedadead@users.noreply.github.com>
Date:   Thu Mar 24 14:26:04 2016 +0530

    Merge pull request #7718 from deathsythe47/fix/unnecessary-comma
    
    Remove unnecessary comma from CONTRIBUTING.md

If you wish to limit your command to last n commits log you can simply pass a parameter. For example, if you wish to list last 2 commits logs

git log -2

Oneline log

git log --oneline

will show all of your commits with only the first part of the hash and the commit message. Each commit will be in a single line, as the oneline flag suggests.

The oneline option prints each commit on a single line, which is useful if you’re looking at a lot of commits. - source

Example (from Free Code Camp repository, with the same section of code from the other example):

87ef97f Merge pull request #7724 from BKinahan/fix/where-art-thou
eb8b729 Fix 'its' typo in Where Art Thou description
e50ff0d Merge pull request #7718 from deathsythe47/fix/unnecessary-comma
2652d04 Remove unnecessary comma from CONTRIBUTING.md
6b01875 Merge pull request #7667 from zerkms/patch-1
766f088 Fixed assignment operator terminology
d1e2468 Merge pull request #7690 from BKinahan/fix/unsubscribe-crash
bed9de2 Merge pull request #7657 from Rafase282/fix/

If you wish to limit you command to last n commits log you can simply pass a parameter. For example, if you wish to list last 2 commits logs

git log -2 --oneline

Prettier log

To see the log in a prettier graph-like structure use:

git log --decorate --oneline --graph

sample output :

* e0c1cea (HEAD -> maint, tag: v2.9.3, origin/maint) Git 2.9.3
*   9b601ea Merge branch 'jk/difftool-in-subdir' into maint
|\  
| * 32b8c58 difftool: use Git::* functions instead of passing around state
| * 98f917e difftool: avoid $GIT_DIR and $GIT_WORK_TREE
| * 9ec26e7 difftool: fix argument handling in subdirs
* |   f4fd627 Merge branch 'jk/reset-ident-time-per-commit' into maint
...

Since it’s a pretty big command, you can assign an alias:

git config --global alias.lol "log --decorate --oneline --graph"

To use the alias version:

# history of current branch :
git lol

# combined history of active branch (HEAD), develop and origin/master branches :
git lol HEAD develop origin/master

# combined history of everything in your repo :
git lol --all

Log with changes inline

To see the log with changes inline, use the -p or --patch options.

git log --patch

Example (from Trello Scientist repository)

ommit 8ea1452aca481a837d9504f1b2c77ad013367d25
Author: Raymond Chou <info@raychou.io>
Date:   Wed Mar 2 10:35:25 2016 -0800

    fix readme error link

diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 1120a00..9bef0ce 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -134,7 +134,7 @@ the control function threw, but *after* testing the other functions and readying
 the logging. The criteria for matching errors is based on the constructor and
 message.

-You can find this full example at [examples/errors.js](examples/error.js).
+You can find this full example at [examples/errors.js](examples/errors.js).

 ## Asynchronous behaviors


commit d3178a22716cc35b6a2bdd679a7ec24bc8c63ffa
:

Log search

git log -S"#define SAMPLES"

Searches for addition or removal of specific string or the string matching provided REGEXP. In this case we’re looking for addition/removal of the string #define SAMPLES. For example:

+#define SAMPLES  100000

or

-#define SAMPLES  100000
git log -G"#define SAMPLES"

Searches for changes in lines containing specific string or the string matching provided REGEXP. For example:

-#define SAMPLES  100000
+#define SAMPLES  100000000

List all contributions grouped by author name

git shortlog summarizes git log and groups by author

If no parameters are given, a list of all commits made per committer will be shown in chronological order.

$ git shortlog
Committer 1 (<number_of_commits>):
    Commit Message 1
    Commit Message 2
    ...
Committer 2 (<number_of_commits>):
    Commit Message 1
    Commit Message 2
    ...

To simply see the number of commits and suppress the commit description, pass in the summary option:

-s

--summary

$ git shortlog -s
<number_of_commits> Committer 1
<number_of_commits> Committer 2

To sort the output by number of commits instead of alphabetically by committer name, pass in the numbered option:

-n

--numbered

To add the email of a committer, add the email option:

-e

--email

A custom format option can also be provided if you want to display information other than the commit subject:

--format

This can be any string accepted by the --format option of git log.

See Colorizing Logs above for more information on this.

Filter logs

git log --after '3 days ago'

Specific dates work too:

git log --after 2016-05-01

As with other commands and flags that accept a date parameter, the allowed date format is as supported by GNU date (highly flexible).

An alias to --after is --since.

Flags exist for the converse too: --before and --until.

You can also filter logs by author. e.g.

git log --author=author

Log for a range of lines within a file

$ git log -L 1,20:index.html
commit 6a57fde739de66293231f6204cbd8b2feca3a869
Author: John Doe <john@doe.com>
Date:   Tue Mar 22 16:33:42 2016 -0500

    commit message

diff --git a/index.html b/index.html
--- a/index.html
+++ b/index.html
@@ -1,17 +1,20 @@
 <!DOCTYPE HTML>
 <html>
-       <head>
-        <meta charset="utf-8">
+
+<head>
+    <meta charset="utf-8">
     <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
     <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

Colorize Logs

git log --graph --pretty=format:'%C(red)%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %C(green)(%cr) %C(yellow)<%an>%Creset'

The format option allows you to specify your own log output format:

Parameter Details
%C(color_name) option colors the output that comes after it
%h or %H abbreviates commit hash (use %H for complete hash)
%Creset resets color to default terminal color
%d ref names
%s subject [commit message]
%cr committer date, relative to current date
%an author name

One line showing commiter name and time since commit

tree = log --oneline --decorate --source --pretty=format:'"%Cblue %h %Cgreen %ar %Cblue %an %C(yellow) %d %Creset %s"'  --all --graph

example

*    40554ac  3 months ago  Alexander Zolotov    Merge pull request #95 from gmandnepr/external_plugins
|\  
| *  e509f61  3 months ago  Ievgen Degtiarenko    Documenting new property
| *  46d4cb6  3 months ago  Ievgen Degtiarenko    Running idea with external plugins
| *  6253da4  3 months ago  Ievgen Degtiarenko    Resolve external plugin classes
| *  9fdb4e7  3 months ago  Ievgen Degtiarenko    Keep original artifact name as this may be important for intellij
| *  22e82e4  3 months ago  Ievgen Degtiarenko    Declaring external plugin in intellij section
|/  
*  bc3d2cb  3 months ago  Alexander Zolotov    Ignore DTD in plugin.xml

Git Log Between Two Branches

Log showing commited files

git log --stat

Example:

commit 4ded994d7fc501451fa6e233361887a2365b91d1
Author: Manassés Souza <manasses.inatel@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon Jun 6 21:32:30 2016 -0300

    MercadoLibre java-sdk dependency

 mltracking-poc/.gitignore |  1 +
 mltracking-poc/pom.xml    | 14 ++++++++++++--
 2 files changed, 13 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

commit 506fff56190f75bc051248770fb0bcd976e3f9a5
Author: Manassés Souza <manasses.inatel@gmail.com>
Date:   Sat Jun 4 12:35:16 2016 -0300

    [manasses] generated by SpringBoot initializr

 .gitignore                                                                            |  42 ++++++++++++
 mltracking-poc/mvnw                                                                   | 233 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 mltracking-poc/mvnw.cmd                                                               | 145 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 mltracking-poc/pom.xml                                                                |  74 ++++++++++++++++++++
 mltracking-poc/src/main/java/br/com/mls/mltracking/MltrackingPocApplication.java      |  12 ++++
 mltracking-poc/src/main/resources/application.properties                              |   0
 mltracking-poc/src/test/java/br/com/mls/mltracking/MltrackingPocApplicationTests.java |  18 +++++
 7 files changed, 524 insertions(+)

Show the contents of a single commit

Using git show we can view a single commit

git show 48c83b3
git show 48c83b3690dfc7b0e622fd220f8f37c26a77c934

Example

commit 48c83b3690dfc7b0e622fd220f8f37c26a77c934
Author: Matt Clark <mrclark32493@gmail.com>
Date:   Wed May 4 18:26:40 2016 -0400

    The commit message will be shown here.

diff --git a/src/main/java/org/jdm/api/jenkins/BuildStatus.java b/src/main/java/org/jdm/api/jenkins/BuildStatus.java
index 0b57e4a..fa8e6a5 100755
--- a/src/main/java/org/jdm/api/jenkins/BuildStatus.java
+++ b/src/main/java/org/jdm/api/jenkins/BuildStatus.java
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ public enum BuildStatus {

                        colorMap.put(BuildStatus.UNSTABLE, Color.decode( "#FFFF55" ));
-                       colorMap.put(BuildStatus.SUCCESS,  Color.decode( "#55FF55" ));
+                       colorMap.put(BuildStatus.SUCCESS,  Color.decode( "#33CC33" ));
                        colorMap.put(BuildStatus.BUILDING, Color.decode( "#5555FF" ));

Searching commit string in git log

Searching git log using some string in log:

git log [options] --grep "search_string"

Example:

git log --all --grep "removed file"

Will search for removed file string in all logs in all branches.

Starting from git 2.4+, the search can be inverted using the --invert-grep option.

Example:

git log --grep="add file" --invert-grep

Will show all commits that do not contain add file.

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