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NAME
git-shortlog - Summarize 'git log' output
SYNOPSIS
git shortlog [<options>] [<revision range>] [[--] <path>...]
git log --pretty=short | git shortlog [<options>]
DESCRIPTION
Summarizes git log output in a format suitable for inclusion in release announcements. Each commit will
be grouped by author and title.
Additionally, "[PATCH]" will be stripped from the commit description.
If no revisions are passed on the command line and either standard input is not a terminal or there is no
current branch, git shortlog will output a summary of the log read from standard input, without reference
to the current repository.
OPTIONS
-n, --numbered
Sort output according to the number of commits per author instead of author alphabetic order.
-s, --summary
Suppress commit description and provide a commit count summary only.
-e, --email
Show the email address of each author.
--format[=<format>]
Instead of the commit subject, use some other information to describe each commit. <format> can be
any string accepted by the --format option of git log, such as * [%h] %s. (See the "PRETTY FORMATS"
section of git-log(1).)
Each pretty-printed commit will be rewrapped before it is shown.
-c, --committer
Collect and show committer identities instead of authors.
-w[<width>[,<indent1>[,<indent2>]]]
Linewrap the output by wrapping each line at width. The first line of each entry is indented by
indent1 spaces, and the second and subsequent lines are indented by indent2 spaces. width, indent1,
and indent2 default to 76, 6 and 9 respectively.
If width is 0 (zero) then indent the lines of the output without wrapping them.
<revision range>
Show only commits in the specified revision range. When no <revision range> is specified, it defaults
to HEAD (i.e. the whole history leading to the current commit). origin..HEAD specifies all the
commits reachable from the current commit (i.e. HEAD), but not from origin. For a complete list of
ways to spell <revision range>, see the "Specifying Ranges" section of gitrevisions(7).
[--] <path>...
Consider only commits that are enough to explain how the files that match the specified paths came to
be.
Paths may need to be prefixed with -- to separate them from options or the revision range, when
confusion arises.
Commit Limiting
Besides specifying a range of commits that should be listed using the special notations explained in the
description, additional commit limiting may be applied.
Using more options generally further limits the output (e.g. --since=<date1> limits to commits newer than
<date1>, and using it with --grep=<pattern> further limits to commits whose log message has a line that
matches <pattern>), unless otherwise noted.
Note that these are applied before commit ordering and formatting options, such as --reverse.
-<number>, -n <number>, --max-count=<number>
Limit the number of commits to 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). With more than one --author=<pattern>, commits whose author matches any of the
given patterns are chosen (similarly for multiple --committer=<pattern>).
--grep-reflog=<pattern>
Limit the commits output to ones with reflog entries that match the specified pattern (regular
expression). With more than one --grep-reflog, commits whose reflog message matches any of the given
patterns are chosen. It is an error to use this option unless --walk-reflogs is in use.
--grep=<pattern>
Limit the commits output to ones with log message that matches the specified pattern (regular
expression). With more than one --grep=<pattern>, commits whose message matches any of the given
patterns are chosen (but see --all-match).
When --notes is in effect, the message from the notes is matched as if it were part of the log
message.
--all-match
Limit the commits output to ones that match all given --grep, instead of ones that match at least
one.
--invert-grep
Limit the commits output to ones with log message that do not match the pattern specified with
--grep=<pattern>.
-i, --regexp-ignore-case
Match the regular expression limiting patterns without regard to letter case.
--basic-regexp
Consider the limiting patterns to be basic regular expressions; this is the default.
-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).
-P, --perl-regexp
Consider the limiting patterns to be Perl-compatible regular expressions.
Support for these types of regular expressions is an optional compile-time dependency. If Git wasn’t
compiled with support for them providing this option will cause it to die.
--remove-empty
Stop when a given path disappears from the tree.
--merges
Print only merge commits. This is exactly the same as --min-parents=2.
--no-merges
Do not print commits with more than one parent. This is exactly the same as --max-parents=1.
--min-parents=<number>, --max-parents=<number>, --no-min-parents, --no-max-parents
Show only commits which have at least (or at most) that many parent commits. In particular,
--max-parents=1 is the same as --no-merges, --min-parents=2 is the same as --merges. --max-parents=0
gives all root commits and --min-parents=3 all octopus merges.
--no-min-parents and --no-max-parents reset these limits (to no limit) again. Equivalent forms are
--min-parents=0 (any commit has 0 or more parents) and --max-parents=-1 (negative numbers denote no
upper limit).
--first-parent
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. Cannot be combined with
--bisect.
--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/, along with HEAD, are listed on the command line as <commit>.
--branches[=<pattern>]
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/heads are listed on the command 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 command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is
given, limit tags to ones 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.
--exclude=<glob-pattern>
Do not include refs matching <glob-pattern> that the next --all, --branches, --tags, --remotes, or
--glob would otherwise consider. Repetitions of this option accumulate exclusion patterns up to the
next --all, --branches, --tags, --remotes, or --glob option (other options or arguments do not clear
accumulated patterns).
The patterns given should not begin with refs/heads, refs/tags, or refs/remotes when applied to
--branches, --tags, or --remotes, respectively, and they must begin with refs/ when applied to --glob
or --all. If a trailing /* is intended, it must be given explicitly.
--reflog
Pretend as if all objects mentioned by reflogs are listed on the command line as <commit>.
--alternate-refs
Pretend as if all objects mentioned as ref tips of alternate repositories were listed on the command
line. An alternate repository is any repository whose object directory is specified in
objects/info/alternates. The set of included objects may be modified by core.alternateRefsCommand,
etc. See git-config(1).
--single-worktree
By default, all working trees will be examined by the following options when there are more than one
(see git-worktree(1)): --all, --reflog and --indexed-objects. This option forces them to examine the
current working tree only.
--ignore-missing
Upon seeing an invalid object name in the input, pretend as if the bad input was not given.
--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. Cannot be combined with
--first-parent.
--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-mark
Like --cherry-pick (see below) but mark equivalent commits with = rather than omitting them, and
inequivalent ones with +.
--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 (see the example below in the description of the --left-right option).
However, it shows the commits that were cherry-picked from the other branch (for example, “3rd on b”
may be cherry-picked from branch A). With this option, such pairs of commits are excluded from the
output.
--left-only, --right-only
List only commits on the respective side of a symmetric difference, i.e. only those which would be
marked < resp. > by --left-right.
For example, --cherry-pick --right-only A...B omits those commits from B which are in A or are
patch-equivalent to a commit in A. In other words, this lists the + commits from git cherry A B. More
precisely, --cherry-pick --right-only --no-merges gives the exact list.
--cherry
A synonym for --right-only --cherry-mark --no-merges; useful to limit the output to the commits on
our side and mark those that have been applied to the other side of a forked history with git log
--cherry upstream...mybranch, similar to git cherry upstream mybranch.
-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, and commit1...commit2 notations cannot be used).
With --pretty format other than oneline and reference (for obvious reasons), this causes the output
to have two extra lines of information taken from the reflog. The reflog designator in the output may
be shown as ref@{Nth} (where Nth is the reverse-chronological index in the reflog) or as
ref@{timestamp} (with the timestamp for that entry), depending on a few rules:
1. If the starting point is specified as ref@{Nth}, show the index format.
2. If the starting point was specified as ref@{now}, show the timestamp format.
3. If neither was used, but --date was given on the command line, show the timestamp in the format
requested by --date.
4. Otherwise, show the index format.
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).
Under --pretty=reference, this information will not be shown at all.
--merge
After a failed merge, show refs that touch files having a conflict and don’t exist on all heads to
merge.
--boundary
Output excluded boundary commits. Boundary commits are prefixed with -.
History Simplification
Sometimes you are only interested in parts of the history, for example the commits modifying a particular
<path>. But there are two parts of History Simplification, one part is selecting the commits and the
other is how to do it, as there are various strategies to simplify the history.
The following options select the commits to be shown:
<paths>
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 history.
The following options affect the way the simplification is performed:
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
Same as the default mode, but does not prune some history.
--dense
Only the selected commits are shown, plus some to have a meaningful 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 commits 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. commits that
are both descendants of commit1, and ancestors of commit2.
A more detailed explanation follows.
Suppose you specified foo as the <paths>. We shall call commits that modify foo !TREESAME, and the rest
TREESAME. (In a diff filtered for foo, they look different and equal, respectively.)
In the following, we will always refer to the same example history to illustrate the differences between
simplification settings. We assume that you are filtering for a file foo in this commit graph:
.-A---M---N---O---P---Q
/ / / / / /
I B C D E Y
\ / / / / /
`-------------' X
The horizontal line of history A---Q is taken to be the first parent of each merge. The commits are:
• I is the initial commit, in which foo exists with contents “asdf”, and a file quux exists with
contents “quux”. Initial commits are compared to an empty tree, so I is !TREESAME.
• In A, foo contains just “foo”.
• B contains the same change as A. Its merge M is trivial and hence TREESAME to all parents.
• C does not change foo, but its merge N changes it to “foobar”, so it is not TREESAME to any parent.
• 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.
• E changes quux to “xyzzy”, and its merge P combines the strings to “quux xyzzy”. P is TREESAME to O,
but not to E.
• X is an independent root commit that added a new file side, and Y modified it. Y is TREESAME to X.
Its merge Q added side to P, and Q is TREESAME to P, but not to Y.
rev-list walks backwards through history, including or excluding commits based on whether --full-history
and/or parent rewriting (via --parents or --children) are used. The following settings are available.
Default mode
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:
.-A---N---O
/ / /
I---------D
Note how the rule to only follow the TREESAME parent, if one is available, removed B from
consideration entirely. C was considered via N, but is TREESAME. Root commits are compared to an
empty tree, so I is !TREESAME.
Parent/child relations are only visible with --parents, but that does not affect the commits selected
in default mode, so we have shown the parent lines.
--full-history without parent rewriting
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
I A B N D O P Q
M was excluded because it is TREESAME to both parents. 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
.-A---M---N---O---P---Q
/ / / / /
I B / D /
\ / / / /
`-------------'
Compare to --full-history without rewriting above. Note that E was pruned away because it is
TREESAME, but the parent list of P was rewritten to contain E's parent I. The same happened for C and
N, and X, Y and Q.
In addition to the above settings, you can change whether TREESAME affects inclusion:
--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:
• Set C' to C.
• Replace each parent P of C' with its simplification P'. In the process, drop parents that are
ancestors of other parents or that are root commits TREESAME to an empty tree, and remove
duplicates, but take care to never drop all parents that we are TREESAME to.
• 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:
.-A---M---N---O
/ / /
I B D
\ / /
`---------'
Note the major differences in N, P, and Q over --full-history:
• N's parent list had I removed, because it is an ancestor of the other parent M. Still, N remained
because it is !TREESAME.
• P's parent list similarly had I removed. P was then removed completely, because it had one
parent and is TREESAME.
• Q's parent list had Y simplified to X. X was then removed, because it was a TREESAME root. Q
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:
D---E-------F
/ \ \
B---C---G---H---I---J
/ \
A-------K---------------L--M
A regular D..M computes the set of commits that are ancestors of M, but excludes the ones that are
ancestors of D. This is useful to see what happened to the history leading to M since D, in the sense
that “what does M have that did not exist in D”. The result in this example would be all the commits,
except A and B (and D itself, of course).
When we want to find out what commits in M are contaminated with the bug introduced by D and need
fixing, however, we might want to view only the subset of D..M that are actually descendants of D,
i.e. excluding C and K. This is exactly what the --ancestry-path option does. Applied to the D..M
range, it results in:
E-------F
\ \
G---H---I---J
\
L--M
The --simplify-by-decoration option allows you to view only the big picture of the topology of the
history, by omitting commits that are not referenced by tags. Commits are marked as !TREESAME (in other
words, kept after history simplification rules described above) if (1) they are referenced by tags, or
(2) they change the contents of the paths given on the command line. All other commits are marked as
TREESAME (subject to be simplified away).
MAPPING AUTHORS
The .mailmap feature is used to coalesce together commits by the same person in the shortlog, where their
name and/or email address was spelled differently.
If the file .mailmap exists at the toplevel of the repository, or at the location pointed to by the
mailmap.file or mailmap.blob configuration options, it is used to map author and committer names and
email addresses to canonical real names and email addresses.
In the simple form, each line in the file consists of the canonical real name of an author, whitespace,
and an email address used in the commit (enclosed by < and >) to map to the name. For example:
Proper Name <commit@email.xx>
The more complex forms are:
<proper@email.xx> <commit@email.xx>
which allows mailmap to replace only the email part of a commit, and:
Proper Name <proper@email.xx> <commit@email.xx>
which allows mailmap to replace both the name and the email of a commit matching the specified commit
email address, and:
Proper Name <proper@email.xx> Commit Name <commit@email.xx>
which allows mailmap to replace both the name and the email of a commit matching both the specified
commit name and email address.
Example 1: Your history contains commits by two authors, Jane and Joe, whose names appear in the
repository under several forms:
Joe Developer <joe@example.com>
Joe R. Developer <joe@example.com>
Jane Doe <jane@example.com>
Jane Doe <jane@laptop.(none)>
Jane D. <jane@desktop.(none)>
Now suppose that Joe wants his middle name initial used, and Jane prefers her family name fully spelled
out. A proper .mailmap file would look like:
Jane Doe <jane@desktop.(none)>
Joe R. Developer <joe@example.com>
Note how there is no need for an entry for <jane@laptop.(none)>, because the real name of that author is
already correct.
Example 2: Your repository contains commits from the following authors:
nick1 <bugs@company.xx>
nick2 <bugs@company.xx>
nick2 <nick2@company.xx>
santa <me@company.xx>
claus <me@company.xx>
CTO <cto@coompany.xx>
Then you might want a .mailmap file that looks like:
<cto@company.xx> <cto@coompany.xx>
Some Dude <some@dude.xx> nick1 <bugs@company.xx>
Other Author <other@author.xx> nick2 <bugs@company.xx>
Other Author <other@author.xx> <nick2@company.xx>
Santa Claus <santa.claus@northpole.xx> <me@company.xx>
Use hash # for comments that are either on their own line, or after the email address.
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