Provided by:
git-core_1.5.6.3-1.1ubuntu2_i386 
NAME
git-log - Show commit logs
SYNOPSIS
git-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.
--ignore-submodules
Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation.
--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)[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". 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 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).
--parents
Print the parents of the commit.
--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
--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 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
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>.
--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: <author date>
<title line>
<full commit message>
· full
commit <sha1>
Author: <author>
Commit: <committer>
<title line>
<full commit message>
· fuller
commit <sha1>
Author: <author>
AuthorDate: <author date>
Commit: <committer>
CommitDate: <committer date>
<title line>
<full commit message>
· email
From <sha1> <date>
From: <author>
Date: <author date>
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
· %x00: print a byte from a hex code
· tformat:
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
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(1) suite