GIT-LOG(1) Git Manual GIT-LOG(1)
NAME
git-log - Show commit logs
SYNOPSIS
git log [<options>] [<revision range>] [[--] <path>...]
DESCRIPTION
Shows the commit logs.
The command takes options applicable to the git rev-list command to control what is shown and how, and options
applicable to the git diff-* commands to control how the changes each commit introduces are shown.
OPTIONS
--follow
Continue listing the history of a file beyond renames (works only for a single file).
--no-decorate, --decorate[=short|full|no]
Print out the ref names of any commits that are shown. If short is specified, the ref name prefixes
refs/heads/, refs/tags/ and refs/remotes/ will not be printed. If full is specified, the full ref name
(including prefix) will be printed. The default option is short.
--source
Print out the ref name given on the command line by which each commit was reached.
--use-mailmap
Use mailmap file to map author and committer names and email to canonical real names and email addresses.
See git-shortlog(1).
--full-diff
Without this flag, "git log -p <path>..." 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 "<path>..." limits only commits, and doesn’t limit diff for those commits.
Note that this affects all diff-based output types, e.g. those produced by --stat etc.
--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.
<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>...
Show only commits that are enough to explain how the files that match the specified paths came to be. See
"History Simplification" below for details and other simplification modes.
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
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 --show-notes is in effect, the message from the notes as if it is 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.
-i, --regexp-ignore-case
Match the regexp limiting patterns without regard to letters 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).
--perl-regexp
Consider the limiting patterns to be Perl-compatible regexp. Requires libpcre to be compiled in.
--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
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 refs/ 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.
--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.
--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). 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.
--left-only, --right-only
List only commits on the respective side of a symmetric range, i.e. only those which would be marked <
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 commit@{now}, output also uses commit@{timestamp} notation instead.
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).
--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.
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.
\ / / / /
`-------------'
The horizontal line of history A---P 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". Despite appearing
interesting, P is TREESAME to all parents.
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 and M were excluded because they are TREESAME to a parent. 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.
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. Note also that
P was included despite being TREESAME.
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, and remove duplicates.
· 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 and P 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.
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:
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).
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.
--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 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
Overrides a previous --no-walk.
Commit Formatting
--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, email, raw and format:<string>. See the "PRETTY FORMATS" section for some
additional details for each format. 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 a partial 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.
--no-abbrev-commit
Show the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name. This negates --abbrev-commit and those options which
imply it such as "--oneline". It also overrides the log.abbrevCommit variable.
--oneline
This is a shorthand for "--pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit" used together.
--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.
--notes[=<ref>]
Show the notes (see git-notes(1)) that annotate the commit, when showing the commit log message. This is
the default for git log, git show and git whatchanged commands when there is no --pretty, --format nor
--oneline option given on the command line.
By default, the notes shown are from the notes refs listed in the core.notesRef and notes.displayRef
variables (or corresponding environment overrides). See git-config(1) for more details.
With an optional <ref> argument, show this notes ref instead of the default notes ref(s). The ref is taken
to be in refs/notes/ if it is not qualified.
Multiple --notes options can be combined to control which notes are being displayed. Examples:
"--notes=foo" will show only notes from "refs/notes/foo"; "--notes=foo --notes" will show both notes from
"refs/notes/foo" and from the default notes ref(s).
--no-notes
Do not show notes. This negates the above --notes option, by resetting the list of notes refs from which
notes are shown. Options are parsed in the order given on the command line, so e.g. "--notes --notes=foo
--no-notes --notes=bar" will only show notes from "refs/notes/bar".
--show-notes[=<ref>], --[no-]standard-notes
These options are deprecated. Use the above --notes/--no-notes options instead.
--show-signature
Check the validity of a signed commit object by passing the signature to gpg --verify and show the output.
--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=raw shows the date in the internal raw Git format %s %z format.
--date=default shows timestamps in the original timezone (either committer’s or author’s).
--parents
Print also the parents of the commit (in the form "commit parent..."). Also enables parent rewriting, see
History Simplification below.
--children
Print also the children of the commit (in the form "commit child..."). Also enables parent rewriting, see
History Simplification below.
--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 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.
This enables parent rewriting, see History Simplification below.
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.
This flag makes the merge commits show the full diff like regular commits; for each merge parent, a
separate log entry and diff is generated. An exception is that only diff against the first parent is shown
when --first-parent option is given; in that case, the output represents the changes the merge brought
into the then-current branch.
-r
Show recursive diffs.
-t
Show the tree objects in the diff output. This implies -r.
-s
Suppress diff output.
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.
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
<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>
· 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 SHA-1s 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:<string>
The 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:
· %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))
· %ad: author date (format respects --date= option)
· %aD: author date, RFC2822 style
· %cE: committer email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
· %cd: committer date
· %cD: committer date, RFC2822 style
· %cr: committer date, relative
· %ct: committer date, UNIX timestamp
· %ci: committer date, ISO 8601 format
· %d: ref names, like the --decorate option of git-log(1)
· %e: encoding
· %s: subject
· %f: sanitized subject line, suitable for a filename
· %b: body
· %B: raw body (unwrapped subject and body)
· %N: commit notes
· %GG: raw verification message from GPG for a signed commit
· %G?: show "G" for a Good signature, "B" for a Bad signature, "U" for a good, untrusted signature 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
· %gD: reflog selector, e.g., refs/stash@{1}
· %gd: shortened reflog selector, e.g., stash@{1}
· %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
· %Cred: switch color to red
· %Cgreen: switch color to green
· %n: newline
· %%: a raw %
· %x00: print a byte from a hex code
· %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)
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 placeholder will use the "short" decoration format if --decorate was not already provided on the
command line.
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, line-feeds that immediately precede 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
-U<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.
--minimal
Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced.
--patience
Generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.
--histogram
Generate a diff using the "histogram diff" algorithm.
--diff-algorithm={patience|minimal|histogram|myers}
Choose a diff algorithm. The variants are as follows:
default, myers
The basic greedy diff algorithm. Currently, this is the default.
minimal
Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced.
patience
Use "patience diff" algorithm when generating patches.
histogram
This algorithm extends the patience algorithm to "support low-occurrence common elements".
For instance, if you configured diff.algorithm variable to a non-default value and want to use the default
one, then you have to use --diff-algorithm=default option.
--stat[=<width>[,<name-width>[,<count>]]]
Generate a diffstat. By default, as much space as necessary will be used for the filename part, and the
rest for the graph part. Maximum width defaults to terminal width, or 80 columns if not connected to a
terminal, and can be overridden by <width>. The width of the filename part can be limited by giving
another width <name-width> after a comma. The width of the graph part can be limited by using
--stat-graph-width=<width> (affects all commands generating a stat graph) or by setting
diff.statGraphWidth=<width> (does not affect git format-patch). By giving a third parameter <count>, you
can limit the output to the first <count> lines, followed by ... if there are more.
These parameters can also be set individually with --stat-width=<width>, --stat-name-width=<name-width>
and --stat-count=<count>.
--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
no parameter is given.
lines
Compute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular line-based diff analysis, and summing the
removed/added line counts. (For binary files, count 64-byte chunks instead, since binary files have no
natural concept of lines). This is a more expensive --dirstat behavior than the changes behavior, but
it does count rearranged lines within a file as much as other changes. The resulting output is
consistent with what you get from the other --*stat options.
files
Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of files changed. Each changed file counts equally
in the dirstat analysis. This is the computationally cheapest --dirstat behavior, since it does not
have to look at the file contents at all.
cumulative
Count changes in a child directory for the parent directory as well. Note that when using cumulative,
the sum of the percentages reported may exceed 100%. The default (non-cumulative) behavior can be
specified with the noncumulative parameter.
<limit>
An integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by default). Directories contributing less than
this percentage of the changes are not shown in the output.
Example: The following will count changed files, while ignoring directories with less than 10% of the
total amount of changed files, and accumulating child directory counts in the parent directories:
--dirstat=files,10,cumulative.
--summary
Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as creations, renames and mode changes.
--patch-with-stat
Synonym for -p --stat.
-z
Separate the commits with NULs instead of with new newlines.
Also, when --raw or --numstat has been given, do not munge pathnames and use NULs as output field
terminators.
Without this option, each pathname output will have TAB, LF, double quotes, and backslash characters
replaced with \t, \n, \", and \\, respectively, and the pathname will be enclosed in double quotes if any
of those replacements occurred.
--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.
--submodule[=<format>]
Specify how differences in submodules are shown. When --submodule or --submodule=log is given, the log
format is used. This format lists the commits in the range like git-submodule(1)summary does. Omitting the
--submodule option or specifying --submodule=short, uses the short format. This format just shows the
whitespace; see --word-diff-regex below. The <mode> defaults to plain, and must be one of:
color
Highlight changed words using only colors. Implies --color.
plain
Show words as [-removed-] and {+added+}. Makes no attempts to escape the delimiters if they appear in
the input, so the output may be ambiguous.
porcelain
Use a special line-based format intended for script consumption. Added/removed/unchanged runs are
printed in the usual unified diff format, starting with a +/-/` ` character at the beginning of the
line and extending to the end of the line. Newlines in the input are represented by a tilde ~ on a
line of its own.
none
Disable word diff again.
Note that despite the name of the first mode, color is used to highlight the changed parts in all modes if
enabled.
--word-diff-regex=<regex>
Use <regex> to decide what a word is, instead of considering runs of non-whitespace to be a word. Also
implies --word-diff unless it was already enabled.
Every non-overlapping match of the <regex> is considered a word. Anything between these matches is
considered whitespace and ignored(!) for the purposes of finding differences. You may want to append
|[^[:space:]] to your regular expression to make sure that it matches all non-whitespace characters. A
match that contains a newline is silently truncated(!) at the newline.
The regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration option, see gitattributes(1) or git-
config(1). Giving it explicitly overrides any diff driver or configuration setting. Diff drivers override
configuration settings.
--color-words[=<regex>]
Equivalent to --word-diff=color plus (if a regex was specified) --word-diff-regex=<regex>.
--no-renames
Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration file gives the default to do so.
--check
Warn if changes introduce whitespace errors. What are considered whitespace errors is controlled by
core.whitespace configuration. By default, trailing whitespaces (including lines that solely consist of
whitespaces) and a space character that is immediately followed by a tab character inside the initial
indent of the line are considered whitespace errors. Exits with non-zero status if problems are found. Not
compatible with --exit-code.
--full-index
Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full pre- and post-image blob object names on the
"index" line when generating patch format output.
--binary
In addition to --full-index, output a binary diff that can be applied with git-apply.
original should remain in the result for Git to consider it a total rewrite (i.e. otherwise the resulting
patch will be a series of deletion and insertion mixed together with context lines).
When used with -M, a totally-rewritten file is also considered as the source of a rename (usually -M only
considers a file that disappeared as the source of a rename), and the number n controls this aspect of the
-B option (defaults to 50%). -B20% specifies that a change with addition and deletion compared to 20% or
more of the file’s size are eligible for being picked up as a possible source of a rename to another file.
-M[<n>], --find-renames[=<n>]
If generating diffs, detect and report renames for each commit. For following files across renames while
traversing history, see --follow. If n is specified, it is a threshold on the similarity index (i.e.
amount of addition/deletions compared to the file’s size). For example, -M90% means Git should consider a
delete/add pair to be a rename if more than 90% of the file hasn’t changed. Without a % sign, the number
is to be read as a fraction, with a decimal point before it. I.e., -M5 becomes 0.5, and is thus the same
as -M50%. Similarly, -M05 is the same as -M5%. To limit detection to exact renames, use -M100%.
-C[<n>], --find-copies[=<n>]
Detect copies as well as renames. See also --find-copies-harder. If n is specified, it has the same
meaning as for -M<n>.
--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.
-D, --irreversible-delete
Omit the preimage for deletes, i.e. print only the header but not the diff between the preimage and
/dev/null. The resulting patch is not meant to be applied with patch nor git apply; this is solely for
people who want to just concentrate on reviewing the text after the change. In addition, the output
obviously lack enough information to apply such a patch in reverse, even manually, hence the name of the
option.
When used together with -B, omit also the preimage in the deletion part of a delete/create pair.
-l<num>
The -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.
--diff-filter=[(A|C|D|M|R|T|U|X|B)...[*]]
Select only files that are Added (A), Copied (C), Deleted (D), Modified (M), Renamed (R), have their type
(i.e. regular file, symlink, submodule, ...) changed (T), are Unmerged (U), are Unknown (X), or have had
their pairing Broken (B). Any combination of the filter characters (including none) can 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.
-S<string>
Look for differences that introduce or remove an instance of <string>. Note that this is different than
the string simply appearing in diff output; see the pickaxe entry in gitdiffcore(7) for more details.
-G<regex>
Look for differences whose added or removed line matches the given <regex>.
--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.
-a, --text
Treat all files as text.
--ignore-space-at-eol
Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
-b, --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.
-w, --ignore-all-space
Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences even if one line has whitespace where the
other line has none.
--inter-hunk-context=<lines>
Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified number of lines, thereby fusing hunks that are
close to each other.
-W, --function-context
Show whole surrounding functions of changes.
--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.
--textconv, --no-textconv
Allow (or disallow) external text conversion filters to be run when comparing binary files. See
gitattributes(5) for details. Because textconv filters are typically a one-way conversion, the resulting
diff is suitable for human consumption, but cannot be applied. For this reason, textconv filters are
enabled by default only for git-diff(1) and git-log(1), but not for git-format-patch(1) or diff plumbing
commands.
--ignore-submodules[=<when>]
Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation. <when> can be either "none", "untracked", "dirty" or
"all", which is the default. Using "none" will consider the submodule modified when it either contains
untracked or modified files or its HEAD differs from the commit recorded in the superproject and can be
used to override any settings of the ignore option in git-config(1) or gitmodules(5). When "untracked" is
used submodules are not considered dirty when they only contain untracked content (but they are still
scanned for modified content). Using "dirty" ignores all changes to the work tree of submodules, only
changes to the commits stored in the superproject are shown (this was the behavior until 1.7.0). Using
"all" hides all changes to submodules.
--src-prefix=<prefix>
Show the given source prefix instead of "a/".
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 the 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>
File modes are printed as 6-digit octal numbers including the file type and file permission bits.
Path names in extended headers do not include the a/ and b/ prefixes.
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.
The index line includes the SHA-1 checksum before and after the change. The <mode> is included if the file
mode does not change; otherwise, separate lines indicate the old and the new 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.
4. All the file1 files in the output refer to files before the commit, and all the file2 files refer to files
after the commit. It is incorrect to apply each change to each file sequentially. For example, this patch
will swap a and b:
diff --git a/a b/b
rename from a
rename to b
diff --git a/b b/a
rename from b
rename to a
@@@ -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 --cc 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
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 result, 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
eight 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.
git log --branches --not --remotes=origin
Shows all commits that are in any of local branches but not in any of remote-tracking branches for origin
(what you have that origin doesn’t).
git log master --not --remotes=*/master
Shows all commits that are in local master but not in any remote repository master branches.
git log -p -m --first-parent
Shows the history including change diffs, but only from the "main branch" perspective, skipping commits
that come from merged branches, and showing full diffs of changes introduced by the merges. This makes
sense only when following a strict policy of merging all topic branches when staying on a single
integration branch.
git log -3
Limits the number of commits to show to 3.
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
1. git commit and git commit-tree 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, git blame and friends look at the encoding header of a commit object, and try 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.
CONFIGURATION
See git-config(1) for core variables and git-diff(1) for settings related to diff generation.
format.pretty
Default for the --format option. (See "PRETTY FORMATS" above.) Defaults to "medium".
i18n.logOutputEncoding
Encoding to use when displaying logs. (See "Discussion", above.) Defaults to the value of
i18n.commitEncoding if set, UTF-8 otherwise.
log.date
Default format for human-readable dates. (Compare the --date option.) Defaults to "default", which means
to write dates like Sat May 8 19:35:34 2010 -0500.
log.showroot
If false, git log and related commands will not treat the initial commit as a big creation event. Any root
commits in git log -p output would be shown without a diff attached. The default is true.
mailmap.*
See git-shortlog(1).
notes.displayRef
Which refs, in addition to the default set by core.notesRef or GIT_NOTES_REF, to read notes from when
showing commit messages with the log family of commands. See git-notes(1).
May be an unabbreviated ref name or a glob and may be specified multiple times. A warning will be issued
for refs that do not exist, but a glob that does not match any refs is silently ignored.
This setting can be disabled by the --no-notes option, overridden by the GIT_NOTES_DISPLAY_REF environment
variable, and overridden by the --notes=<ref> option.
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