Provided by: git-man_2.37.2-1ubuntu1_all 
NAME
git-rev-list - Lists commit objects in reverse chronological order
SYNOPSIS
git rev-list [<options>] <commit>... [[--] <path>...]
DESCRIPTION
List commits that are reachable by following the parent links from the given commit(s),
but exclude commits that are reachable from the one(s) given with a ^ in front of them.
The output is given in reverse chronological order by default.
You can think of this as a set operation. Commits reachable from any of the commits given
on the command line form a set, and then commits reachable from any of the ones given with
^ in front are subtracted from that set. The remaining commits are what comes out in the
command’s output. Various other options and paths parameters can be used to further limit
the result.
Thus, the following command:
$ git rev-list foo bar ^baz
means "list all the commits which are reachable from foo or bar, but not from baz".
A special notation "<commit1>..<commit2>" can be used as a short-hand for "^<commit1>
<commit2>". For example, either of the following may be used interchangeably:
$ git rev-list origin..HEAD
$ git rev-list HEAD ^origin
Another special notation is "<commit1>...<commit2>" which is useful for merges. The
resulting set of commits is the symmetric difference between the two operands. The
following two commands are equivalent:
$ git rev-list A B --not $(git merge-base --all A B)
$ git rev-list A...B
rev-list is a very essential Git command, since it provides the ability to build and
traverse commit ancestry graphs. For this reason, it has a lot of different options that
enables it to be used by commands as different as git bisect and git repack.
OPTIONS
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.
--since-as-filter=<date>
Show all commits more recent than a specific date. This visits all commits in the
range, rather than stopping at the first commit which is older than a specific date.
--until=<date>, --before=<date>
Show commits older than a specific date.
--max-age=<timestamp>, --min-age=<timestamp>
Limit the commits output to specified time range.
--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).
--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
When finding commits to include, 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.
--exclude-first-parent-only
When finding commits to exclude (with a ^), follow only the first parent commit upon
seeing a merge commit. This can be used to find the set of changes in a topic branch
from the point where it diverged from the remote branch, given that arbitrary merges
can be valid topic branch changes.
--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.
--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.
--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.
--disk-usage
Suppress normal output; instead, print the sum of the bytes used for on-disk storage
by the selected commits or objects. This is equivalent to piping the output into git
cat-file --batch-check='%(objectsize:disk)', except that it runs much faster
(especially with --use-bitmap-index). See the CAVEATS section in git-cat-file(1) for
the limitations of what "on-disk storage" means.
--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 -.
--use-bitmap-index
Try to speed up the traversal using the pack bitmap index (if one is available). Note
that when traversing with --objects, trees and blobs will not have their associated
path printed.
--progress=<header>
Show progress reports on stderr as objects are considered. The <header> text will be
printed with each progress update.
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)
--show-pulls
Include all commits from the default mode, but also any merge commits that are not
TREESAME to the first parent but are TREESAME to a later parent. This mode is helpful
for showing the merge commits that "first introduced" a change to a branch.
--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.
There is another 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
Before discussing another option, --show-pulls, we need to create a new example history.
A common problem users face when looking at simplified history is that a commit they know
changed a file somehow does not appear in the file’s simplified history. Let’s demonstrate
a new example and show how options such as --full-history and --simplify-merges works in
that case:
.-A---M-----C--N---O---P
/ / \ \ \/ / /
I B \ R-'`-Z' /
\ / \/ /
\ / /\ /
`---X--' `---Y--'
For this example, suppose I created file.txt which was modified by A, B, and X in
different ways. The single-parent commits C, Z, and Y do not change file.txt. The merge
commit M was created by resolving the merge conflict to include both changes from A and B
and hence is not TREESAME to either. The merge commit R, however, was created by ignoring
the contents of file.txt at M and taking only the contents of file.txt at X. Hence, R is
TREESAME to X but not M. Finally, the natural merge resolution to create N is to take the
contents of file.txt at R, so N is TREESAME to R but not C. The merge commits O and P are
TREESAME to their first parents, but not to their second parents, Z and Y respectively.
When using the default mode, N and R both have a TREESAME parent, so those edges are
walked and the others are ignored. The resulting history graph is:
I---X
When using --full-history, Git walks every edge. This will discover the commits A and B
and the merge M, but also will reveal the merge commits O and P. With parent rewriting,
the resulting graph is:
.-A---M--------N---O---P
/ / \ \ \/ / /
I B \ R-'`--' /
\ / \/ /
\ / /\ /
`---X--' `------'
Here, the merge commits O and P contribute extra noise, as they did not actually
contribute a change to file.txt. They only merged a topic that was based on an older
version of file.txt. This is a common issue in repositories using a workflow where many
contributors work in parallel and merge their topic branches along a single trunk: manu
unrelated merges appear in the --full-history results.
When using the --simplify-merges option, the commits O and P disappear from the results.
This is because the rewritten second parents of O and P are reachable from their first
parents. Those edges are removed and then the commits look like single-parent commits that
are TREESAME to their parent. This also happens to the commit N, resulting in a history
view as follows:
.-A---M--.
/ / \
I B R
\ / /
\ / /
`---X--'
In this view, we see all of the important single-parent changes from A, B, and X. We also
see the carefully-resolved merge M and the not-so-carefully-resolved merge R. This is
usually enough information to determine why the commits A and B "disappeared" from history
in the default view. However, there are a few issues with this approach.
The first issue is performance. Unlike any previous option, the --simplify-merges option
requires walking the entire commit history before returning a single result. This can make
the option difficult to use for very large repositories.
The second issue is one of auditing. When many contributors are working on the same
repository, it is important which merge commits introduced a change into an important
branch. The problematic merge R above is not likely to be the merge commit that was used
to merge into an important branch. Instead, the merge N was used to merge R and X into the
important branch. This commit may have information about why the change X came to override
the changes from A and B in its commit message.
--show-pulls
In addition to the commits shown in the default history, show each merge commit that
is not TREESAME to its first parent but is TREESAME to a later parent.
When a merge commit is included by --show-pulls, the merge is treated as if it
"pulled" the change from another branch. When using --show-pulls on this example (and
no other options) the resulting graph is:
I---X---R---N
Here, the merge commits R and N are included because they pulled the commits X and R
into the base branch, respectively. These merges are the reason the commits A and B do
not appear in the default history.
When --show-pulls is paired with --simplify-merges, the graph includes all of the
necessary information:
.-A---M--. N
/ / \ /
I B R
\ / /
\ / /
`---X--'
Notice that since M is reachable from R, the edge from N to M was simplified away.
However, N still appears in the history as an important commit because it "pulled" the
change R into the main branch.
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).
Bisection Helpers
--bisect
Limit output to the one commit object which is roughly halfway between included and
excluded commits. Note that the bad bisection ref refs/bisect/bad is added to the
included commits (if it exists) and the good bisection refs refs/bisect/good-* are
added to the excluded commits (if they exist). Thus, supposing there are no refs in
refs/bisect/, if
$ git rev-list --bisect foo ^bar ^baz
outputs midpoint, the output of the two commands
$ git rev-list foo ^midpoint
$ git rev-list midpoint ^bar ^baz
would be of roughly the same length. Finding the change which introduces a regression
is thus reduced to a binary search: repeatedly generate and test new 'midpoint’s until
the commit chain is of length one.
--bisect-vars
This calculates the same as --bisect, except that refs in refs/bisect/ are not used,
and except that this outputs text ready to be eval’ed by the shell. These lines will
assign the name of the midpoint revision to the variable bisect_rev, and the expected
number of commits to be tested after bisect_rev is tested to bisect_nr, the expected
number of commits to be tested if bisect_rev turns out to be good to bisect_good, the
expected number of commits to be tested if bisect_rev turns out to be bad to
bisect_bad, and the number of commits we are bisecting right now to bisect_all.
--bisect-all
This outputs all the commit objects between the included and excluded commits, ordered
by their distance to the included and excluded commits. Refs in refs/bisect/ are not
used. The farthest from them is displayed first. (This is the only one displayed by
--bisect.)
This is useful because it makes it easy to choose a good commit to test when you want
to avoid to test some of them for some reason (they may not compile for example).
This option can be used along with --bisect-vars, in this case, after all the sorted
commit objects, there will be the same text as if --bisect-vars had been used alone.
Commit Ordering
By default, the commits are shown in reverse chronological order.
--date-order
Show no parents before all of its children are shown, but otherwise show commits in
the commit timestamp order.
--author-date-order
Show no parents before all of its children are shown, but otherwise show commits in
the author timestamp order.
--topo-order
Show no parents before all of its children are shown, and avoid showing commits on
multiple lines of history intermixed.
For example, in a commit history like this:
---1----2----4----7
\ \
3----5----6----8---
where the numbers denote the order of commit timestamps, git rev-list and friends with
--date-order show the commits in the timestamp order: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1.
With --topo-order, they would show 8 6 5 3 7 4 2 1 (or 8 7 4 2 6 5 3 1); some older
commits are shown before newer ones in order to avoid showing the commits from two
parallel development track mixed together.
--reverse
Output the commits chosen to be shown (see Commit Limiting section above) 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”.
--in-commit-order
Print tree and blob ids in order of the commits. The tree and blob ids are printed
after they are first referenced by a commit.
--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 a “thin” pack, which records
objects in deltified form based on objects contained in these excluded commits to
reduce network traffic.
--objects-edge-aggressive
Similar to --objects-edge, but it tries harder to find excluded commits at the cost of
increased time. This is used instead of --objects-edge to build “thin” packs for
shallow repositories.
--indexed-objects
Pretend as if all trees and blobs used by the index are listed on the command line.
Note that you probably want to use --objects, too.
--unpacked
Only useful with --objects; print the object IDs that are not in packs.
--object-names
Only useful with --objects; print the names of the object IDs that are found. This is
the default behavior.
--no-object-names
Only useful with --objects; does not print the names of the object IDs that are found.
This inverts --object-names. This flag allows the output to be more easily parsed by
commands such as git-cat-file(1).
--filter=<filter-spec>
Only useful with one of the --objects*; omits objects (usually blobs) from the list of
printed objects. The <filter-spec> may be one of the following:
The form --filter=blob:none omits all blobs.
The form --filter=blob:limit=<n>[kmg] omits blobs larger than n bytes or units. n may
be zero. The suffixes k, m, and g can be used to name units in KiB, MiB, or GiB. For
example, blob:limit=1k is the same as blob:limit=1024.
The form --filter=object:type=(tag|commit|tree|blob) omits all objects which are not
of the requested type.
The form --filter=sparse:oid=<blob-ish> uses a sparse-checkout specification contained
in the blob (or blob-expression) <blob-ish> to omit blobs that would not be required
for a sparse checkout on the requested refs.
The form --filter=tree:<depth> omits all blobs and trees whose depth from the root
tree is >= <depth> (minimum depth if an object is located at multiple depths in the
commits traversed). <depth>=0 will not include any trees or blobs unless included
explicitly in the command-line (or standard input when --stdin is used). <depth>=1
will include only the tree and blobs which are referenced directly by a commit
reachable from <commit> or an explicitly-given object. <depth>=2 is like <depth>=1
while also including trees and blobs one more level removed from an explicitly-given
commit or tree.
Note that the form --filter=sparse:path=<path> that wants to read from an arbitrary
path on the filesystem has been dropped for security reasons.
Multiple --filter= flags can be specified to combine filters. Only objects which are
accepted by every filter are included.
The form --filter=combine:<filter1>+<filter2>+...<filterN> can also be used to
combined several filters, but this is harder than just repeating the --filter flag and
is usually not necessary. Filters are joined by + and individual filters are %-encoded
(i.e. URL-encoded). Besides the + and % characters, the following characters are
reserved and also must be encoded: ~!@#$^&*()[]{}\;",<>?'` as well as all characters
with ASCII code <= 0x20, which includes space and newline.
Other arbitrary characters can also be encoded. For instance, combine:tree:3+blob:none
and combine:tree%3A3+blob%3Anone are equivalent.
--no-filter
Turn off any previous --filter= argument.
--filter-provided-objects
Filter the list of explicitly provided objects, which would otherwise always be
printed even if they did not match any of the filters. Only useful with --filter=.
--filter-print-omitted
Only useful with --filter=; prints a list of the objects omitted by the filter. Object
IDs are prefixed with a “~” character.
--missing=<missing-action>
A debug option to help with future "partial clone" development. This option specifies
how missing objects are handled.
The form --missing=error requests that rev-list stop with an error if a missing object
is encountered. This is the default action.
The form --missing=allow-any will allow object traversal to continue if a missing
object is encountered. Missing objects will silently be omitted from the results.
The form --missing=allow-promisor is like allow-any, but will only allow object
traversal to continue for EXPECTED promisor missing objects. Unexpected missing
objects will raise an error.
The form --missing=print is like allow-any, but will also print a list of the missing
objects. Object IDs are prefixed with a “?” character.
--exclude-promisor-objects
(For internal use only.) Prefilter object traversal at promisor boundary. This is used
with partial clone. This is stronger than --missing=allow-promisor because it limits
the traversal, rather than just silencing errors about missing objects.
--no-walk[=(sorted|unsorted)]
Only show the given commits, but do not traverse their ancestors. This has no effect
if a range is specified. If the argument unsorted is given, the commits are shown in
the order they were given on the command line. Otherwise (if sorted or no argument was
given), the commits are shown in reverse chronological order by commit time. Cannot be
combined with --graph.
--do-walk
Overrides a previous --no-walk.
Commit Formatting
Using these options, git-rev-list(1) will act similar to the more specialized family of
commit log tools: git-log(1), git-show(1), and git-whatchanged(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, reference, email, raw, format:<string>
and tformat:<string>. When <format> is none of the above, and has %placeholder in it,
it acts as if --pretty=tformat:<format> were given.
See the "PRETTY FORMATS" section for some additional details for each format. When
=<format> part is omitted, it 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 a prefix that
names the object uniquely. "--abbrev=<n>" (which also modifies diff output, if it is
displayed) option can be used to specify the minimum length of the prefix.
This should make "--pretty=oneline" a whole lot more readable for people using
80-column terminals.
--no-abbrev-commit
Show the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name. This negates --abbrev-commit,
either explicit or implied by other options such as "--oneline". It also overrides the
log.abbrevCommit variable.
--oneline
This is a shorthand for "--pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit" used together.
--encoding=<encoding>
Commit objects record the character 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. Note that if an object claims to be encoded in X and we are outputting in X,
we will output the object verbatim; this means that invalid sequences in the original
commit may be copied to the output. Likewise, if iconv(3) fails to convert the commit,
we will quietly output the original object verbatim.
--expand-tabs=<n>, --expand-tabs, --no-expand-tabs
Perform a tab expansion (replace each tab with enough spaces to fill to the next
display column that is multiple of <n>) in the log message before showing it in the
output. --expand-tabs is a short-hand for --expand-tabs=8, and --no-expand-tabs is a
short-hand for --expand-tabs=0, which disables tab expansion.
By default, tabs are expanded in pretty formats that indent the log message by 4
spaces (i.e. medium, which is the default, full, and fuller).
--show-signature
Check the validity of a signed commit object by passing the signature to gpg --verify
and show the output.
--relative-date
Synonym for --date=relative.
--date=<format>
Only takes effect for dates shown in human-readable format, such as when using
--pretty. log.date config variable sets a default value for the log command’s --date
option. By default, dates are shown in the original time zone (either committer’s or
author’s). If -local is appended to the format (e.g., iso-local), the user’s local
time zone is used instead.
--date=relative shows dates relative to the current time, e.g. “2 hours ago”. The
-local option has no effect for --date=relative.
--date=local is an alias for --date=default-local.
--date=iso (or --date=iso8601) shows timestamps in a ISO 8601-like format. The
differences to the strict ISO 8601 format are:
• a space instead of the T date/time delimiter
• a space between time and time zone
• no colon between hours and minutes of the time zone
--date=iso-strict (or --date=iso8601-strict) shows timestamps in strict ISO 8601
format.
--date=rfc (or --date=rfc2822) shows timestamps in RFC 2822 format, often found in
email messages.
--date=short shows only the date, but not the time, in YYYY-MM-DD format.
--date=raw shows the date as seconds since the epoch (1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC),
followed by a space, and then the timezone as an offset from UTC (a + or - with four
digits; the first two are hours, and the second two are minutes). I.e., as if the
timestamp were formatted with strftime("%s %z")). Note that the -local option does not
affect the seconds-since-epoch value (which is always measured in UTC), but does
switch the accompanying timezone value.
--date=human shows the timezone if the timezone does not match the current time-zone,
and doesn’t print the whole date if that matches (ie skip printing year for dates that
are "this year", but also skip the whole date itself if it’s in the last few days and
we can just say what weekday it was). For older dates the hour and minute is also
omitted.
--date=unix shows the date as a Unix epoch timestamp (seconds since 1970). As with
--raw, this is always in UTC and therefore -local has no effect.
--date=format:... feeds the format ... to your system strftime, except for %s, %z,
and %Z, which are handled internally. Use --date=format:%c to show the date in your
system locale’s preferred format. See the strftime manual for a complete list of
format placeholders. When using -local, the correct syntax is --date=format-local:....
--date=default is the default format, and is similar to --date=rfc2822, with a few
exceptions:
• there is no comma after the day-of-week
• the time zone is omitted when the local time zone is used
--header
Print the contents of the commit in raw-format; each record is separated with a NUL
character.
--no-commit-header
Suppress the header line containing "commit" and the object ID printed before the
specified format. This has no effect on the built-in formats; only custom formats are
affected.
--commit-header
Overrides a previous --no-commit-header.
--parents
Print also the parents of the commit (in the form "commit parent..."). Also enables
parent rewriting, see History Simplification above.
--children
Print also the children of the commit (in the form "commit child..."). Also enables
parent rewriting, see History Simplification above.
--timestamp
Print the raw commit timestamp.
--left-right
Mark which side of a symmetric difference 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 like 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. Cannot be combined with --no-walk.
This enables parent rewriting, see History Simplification above.
This implies the --topo-order option by default, but the --date-order option may also
be specified.
--show-linear-break[=<barrier>]
When --graph is not used, all history branches are flattened which can make it hard to
see that the two consecutive commits do not belong to a linear branch. This option
puts a barrier in between them in that case. If <barrier> is specified, it is the
string that will be shown instead of the default one.
--count
Print a number stating how many commits would have been listed, and suppress all other
output. When used together with --left-right, instead print the counts for left and
right commits, separated by a tab. When used together with --cherry-mark, omit patch
equivalent commits from these counts and print the count for equivalent commits
separated by a tab.
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 hashes 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.
There are several built-in formats, and you can define additional formats 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:
• oneline
<hash> <title-line>
This is designed to be as compact as possible.
• short
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
<title-line>
• medium
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
Date: <author-date>
<title-line>
<full-commit-message>
• full
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
Commit: <committer>
<title-line>
<full-commit-message>
• fuller
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
AuthorDate: <author-date>
Commit: <committer>
CommitDate: <committer-date>
<title-line>
<full-commit-message>
• reference
<abbrev-hash> (<title-line>, <short-author-date>)
This format is used to refer to another commit in a commit message and is the same as
--pretty='format:%C(auto)%h (%s, %ad)'. By default, the date is formatted with
--date=short unless another --date option is explicitly specified. As with any format:
with format placeholders, its output is not affected by other options like --decorate
and --walk-reflogs.
• email
From <hash> <date>
From: <author>
Date: <author-date>
Subject: [PATCH] <title-line>
<full-commit-message>
• mboxrd
Like email, but lines in the commit message starting with "From " (preceded by zero or
more ">") are quoted with ">" so they aren’t confused as starting a new commit.
• raw
The raw format shows the entire commit exactly as stored in the commit object.
Notably, the hashes are displayed in full, regardless of whether --abbrev or
--no-abbrev are used, and parents information show the true parent commits, without
taking grafts or history simplification into account. Note that this format affects
the way commits are displayed, but not the way the diff is shown e.g. with git log
--raw. To get full object names in a raw diff format, use --no-abbrev.
• format:<format-string>
The format:<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:
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:
• Placeholders that expand to a single literal character:
%n
newline
%%
a raw %
%x00
print a byte from a hex code
• Placeholders that affect formatting of later placeholders:
%Cred
switch color to red
%Cgreen
switch color to green
%Cblue
switch color to blue
%Creset
reset color
%C(...)
color specification, as described under Values in the "CONFIGURATION FILE"
section of git-config(1). By default, colors are shown only when enabled for
log output (by color.diff, color.ui, or --color, and respecting the auto
settings of the former if we are going to a terminal). %C(auto,...) is
accepted as a historical synonym for the default (e.g., %C(auto,red)).
Specifying %C(always,...) will show the colors even when color is not
otherwise enabled (though consider just using --color=always to enable color
for the whole output, including this format and anything else git might
color). auto alone (i.e. %C(auto)) will turn on auto coloring on the next
placeholders until the color is switched again.
%m
left (<), right (>) or boundary (-) mark
%w([<w>[,<i1>[,<i2>]]])
switch line wrapping, like the -w option of git-shortlog(1).
%<(<N>[,trunc|ltrunc|mtrunc])
make the next placeholder take at least N columns, padding spaces on the right
if necessary. Optionally truncate at the beginning (ltrunc), the middle
(mtrunc) or the end (trunc) if the output is longer than N columns. Note that
truncating only works correctly with N >= 2.
%<|(<N>)
make the next placeholder take at least until Nth columns, padding spaces on
the right if necessary
%>(<N>), %>|(<N>)
similar to %<(<N>), %<|(<N>) respectively, but padding spaces on the left
%>>(<N>), %>>|(<N>)
similar to %>(<N>), %>|(<N>) respectively, except that if the next placeholder
takes more spaces than given and there are spaces on its left, use those
spaces
%><(<N>), %><|(<N>)
similar to %<(<N>), %<|(<N>) respectively, but padding both sides (i.e. the
text is centered)
• Placeholders that expand to information extracted from the commit:
%H
commit hash
%h
abbreviated commit hash
%T
tree hash
%t
abbreviated tree hash
%P
parent hashes
%p
abbreviated parent hashes
%an
author name
%aN
author name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%ae
author email
%aE
author email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%al
author email local-part (the part before the @ sign)
%aL
author local-part (see %al) respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-
blame(1))
%ad
author date (format respects --date= option)
%aD
author date, RFC2822 style
%ar
author date, relative
%at
author date, UNIX timestamp
%ai
author date, ISO 8601-like format
%aI
author date, strict ISO 8601 format
%as
author date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)
%ah
author date, human style (like the --date=human option of git-rev-list(1))
%cn
committer name
%cN
committer name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%ce
committer email
%cE
committer email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%cl
committer email local-part (the part before the @ sign)
%cL
committer local-part (see %cl) respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or
git-blame(1))
%cd
committer date (format respects --date= option)
%cD
committer date, RFC2822 style
%cr
committer date, relative
%ct
committer date, UNIX timestamp
%ci
committer date, ISO 8601-like format
%cI
committer date, strict ISO 8601 format
%cs
committer date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)
%ch
committer date, human style (like the --date=human option of git-rev-list(1))
%d
ref names, like the --decorate option of git-log(1)
%D
ref names without the " (", ")" wrapping.
%(describe[:options])
human-readable name, like git-describe(1); empty string for undescribable
commits. The describe string may be followed by a colon and zero or more
comma-separated options. Descriptions can be inconsistent when tags are added
or removed at the same time.
• tags[=<bool-value>]: Instead of only considering annotated tags, consider
lightweight tags as well.
• abbrev=<number>: Instead of using the default number of hexadecimal digits
(which will vary according to the number of objects in the repository with
a default of 7) of the abbreviated object name, use <number> digits, or as
many digits as needed to form a unique object name.
• match=<pattern>: Only consider tags matching the given glob(7) pattern,
excluding the "refs/tags/" prefix.
• exclude=<pattern>: Do not consider tags matching the given glob(7)
pattern, excluding the "refs/tags/" prefix.
%S
ref name given on the command line by which the commit was reached (like git
log --source), only works with git log
%e
encoding
%s
subject
%f
sanitized subject line, suitable for a filename
%b
body
%B
raw body (unwrapped subject and body)
%GG
raw verification message from GPG for a signed commit
%G?
show "G" for a good (valid) signature, "B" for a bad signature, "U" for a good
signature with unknown validity, "X" for a good signature that has expired,
"Y" for a good signature made by an expired key, "R" for a good signature made
by a revoked key, "E" if the signature cannot be checked (e.g. missing key)
and "N" for no signature
%GS
show the name of the signer for a signed commit
%GK
show the key used to sign a signed commit
%GF
show the fingerprint of the key used to sign a signed commit
%GP
show the fingerprint of the primary key whose subkey was used to sign a signed
commit
%GT
show the trust level for the key used to sign a signed commit
%gD
reflog selector, e.g., refs/stash@{1} or refs/stash@{2 minutes ago}; the
format follows the rules described for the -g option. The portion before the @
is the refname as given on the command line (so git log -g refs/heads/master
would yield refs/heads/master@{0}).
%gd
shortened reflog selector; same as %gD, but the refname portion is shortened
for human readability (so refs/heads/master becomes just master).
%gn
reflog identity name
%gN
reflog identity name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-
blame(1))
%ge
reflog identity email
%gE
reflog identity email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-
blame(1))
%gs
reflog subject
%(trailers[:options])
display the trailers of the body as interpreted by git-interpret-trailers(1).
The trailers string may be followed by a colon and zero or more
comma-separated options. If any option is provided multiple times the last
occurrence wins.
• key=<key>: only show trailers with specified <key>. Matching is done
case-insensitively and trailing colon is optional. If option is given
multiple times trailer lines matching any of the keys are shown. This
option automatically enables the only option so that non-trailer lines in
the trailer block are hidden. If that is not desired it can be disabled
with only=false. E.g., %(trailers:key=Reviewed-by) shows trailer lines
with key Reviewed-by.
• only[=<bool>]: select whether non-trailer lines from the trailer block
should be included.
• separator=<sep>: specify a separator inserted between trailer lines. When
this option is not given each trailer line is terminated with a line feed
character. The string <sep> may contain the literal formatting codes
described above. To use comma as separator one must use %x2C as it would
otherwise be parsed as next option. E.g.,
%(trailers:key=Ticket,separator=%x2C ) shows all trailer lines whose key
is "Ticket" separated by a comma and a space.
• unfold[=<bool>]: make it behave as if interpret-trailer’s --unfold option
was given. E.g., %(trailers:only,unfold=true) unfolds and shows all
trailer lines.
• keyonly[=<bool>]: only show the key part of the trailer.
• valueonly[=<bool>]: only show the value part of the trailer.
• key_value_separator=<sep>: specify a separator inserted between trailer
lines. When this option is not given each trailer key-value pair is
separated by ": ". Otherwise it shares the same semantics as
separator=<sep> above.
Note
Some placeholders may depend on other options given to the revision 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 and %D placeholders will use
the "short" decoration format if --decorate was not already provided on the command
line.
The boolean options accept an optional value [=<bool-value>]. The values true, false, on,
off etc. are all accepted. See the "boolean" sub-section in "EXAMPLES" in git-config(1).
If a boolean option is given with no value, it’s enabled.
If you add a + (plus sign) after % of a placeholder, a line-feed is inserted immediately
before the expansion if and only if the placeholder expands to a non-empty string.
If you add a - (minus sign) after % of a placeholder, all consecutive line-feeds
immediately preceding the expansion are deleted if and only if the placeholder 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.
• 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
In addition, any unrecognized string that has a % in it is interpreted as if it has
tformat: in front of it. For example, these two are equivalent:
$ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef
$ git log -2 --pretty=%h 4da45bef
EXAMPLES
• Print the list of commits reachable from the current branch.
git rev-list HEAD
• Print the list of commits on this branch, but not present in the upstream branch.
git rev-list @{upstream}..HEAD
• Format commits with their author and commit message (see also the porcelain git-
log(1)).
git rev-list --format=medium HEAD
• Format commits along with their diffs (see also the porcelain git-log(1), which can do
this in a single process).
git rev-list HEAD |
git diff-tree --stdin --format=medium -p
• Print the list of commits on the current branch that touched any file in the
Documentation directory.
git rev-list HEAD -- Documentation/
• Print the list of commits authored by you in the past year, on any branch, tag, or
other ref.
git rev-list --author=you@example.com --since=1.year.ago --all
• Print the list of objects reachable from the current branch (i.e., all commits and the
blobs and trees they contain).
git rev-list --objects HEAD
• Compare the disk size of all reachable objects, versus those reachable from reflogs,
versus the total packed size. This can tell you whether running git repack -ad might
reduce the repository size (by dropping unreachable objects), and whether expiring
reflogs might help.
# reachable objects
git rev-list --disk-usage --objects --all
# plus reflogs
git rev-list --disk-usage --objects --all --reflog
# total disk size used
du -c .git/objects/pack/*.pack .git/objects/??/*
# alternative to du: add up "size" and "size-pack" fields
git count-objects -v
• Report the disk size of each branch, not including objects used by the current branch.
This can find outliers that are contributing to a bloated repository size (e.g.,
because somebody accidentally committed large build artifacts).
git for-each-ref --format='%(refname)' |
while read branch
do
size=$(git rev-list --disk-usage --objects HEAD..$branch)
echo "$size $branch"
done |
sort -n
• Compare the on-disk size of branches in one group of refs, excluding another. If you
co-mingle objects from multiple remotes in a single repository, this can show which
remotes are contributing to the repository size (taking the size of origin as a
baseline).
git rev-list --disk-usage --objects --remotes=$suspect --not --remotes=origin
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite