{ "mode": "man", "parameter": "GIT-BLAME", "section": "1", "url": "https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/GIT-BLAME/1/json", "generated": "2026-06-03T01:24:52Z", "synopsis": "git blame [-c] [-b] [-l] [--root] [-t] [-f] [-n] [-s] [-e] [-p] [-w] [--incremental]\n[-L ] [-S ] [-M] [-C] [-C] [-C] [--since=]\n[--ignore-rev ] [--ignore-revs-file ]\n[--color-lines] [--color-by-age] [--progress] [--abbrev=]\n[ | --contents | --reverse ..] [--] ", "sections": { "NAME": { "content": "git-blame - Show what revision and author last modified each line of a file\n", "subsections": [] }, "SYNOPSIS": { "content": "git blame [-c] [-b] [-l] [--root] [-t] [-f] [-n] [-s] [-e] [-p] [-w] [--incremental]\n[-L ] [-S ] [-M] [-C] [-C] [-C] [--since=]\n[--ignore-rev ] [--ignore-revs-file ]\n[--color-lines] [--color-by-age] [--progress] [--abbrev=]\n[ | --contents | --reverse ..] [--] \n\n", "subsections": [] }, "DESCRIPTION": { "content": "Annotates each line in the given file with information from the revision which last modified\nthe line. Optionally, start annotating from the given revision.\n\nWhen specified one or more times, -L restricts annotation to the requested lines.\n\nThe origin of lines is automatically followed across whole-file renames (currently there is\nno option to turn the rename-following off). To follow lines moved from one file to another,\nor to follow lines that were copied and pasted from another file, etc., see the -C and -M\noptions.\n\nThe report does not tell you anything about lines which have been deleted or replaced; you\nneed to use a tool such as git diff or the \"pickaxe\" interface briefly mentioned in the\nfollowing paragraph.\n\nApart from supporting file annotation, Git also supports searching the development history\nfor when a code snippet occurred in a change. This makes it possible to track when a code\nsnippet was added to a file, moved or copied between files, and eventually deleted or\nreplaced. It works by searching for a text string in the diff. A small example of the pickaxe\ninterface that searches for blameusage:\n\n$ git log --pretty=oneline -S'blameusage'\n5040f17eba15504bad66b14a645bddd9b015ebb7 blame -S \nea4c7f9bf69e781dd0cd88d2bccb2bf5cc15c9a7 git-blame: Make the output\n\n", "subsections": [] }, "OPTIONS": { "content": "", "subsections": [ { "name": "-b", "content": "Show blank SHA-1 for boundary commits. This can also be controlled via the\nblame.blankBoundary config option.\n", "flag": "-b" }, { "name": "--root", "content": "Do not treat root commits as boundaries. This can also be controlled via the\nblame.showRoot config option.\n", "long": "--root" }, { "name": "--show-stats", "content": "Include additional statistics at the end of blame output.\n\n-L ,, -L :\nAnnotate only the line range given by ,, or by the function name regex\n. May be specified multiple times. Overlapping ranges are allowed.\n\n and are optional. -L or -L , spans from to end of\nfile. -L , spans from start of file to .\n\n and can take one of these forms:\n\n• number\n\nIf or is a number, it specifies an absolute line number (lines count\nfrom 1).\n\n• /regex/\n\nThis form will use the first line matching the given POSIX regex. If is a\nregex, it will search from the end of the previous -L range, if any, otherwise from\nthe start of file. If is ^/regex/, it will search from the start of file. If\n is a regex, it will search starting at the line given by .\n\n• +offset or -offset\n\nThis is only valid for and will specify a number of lines before or after the\nline given by .\n\nIf : is given in place of and , it is a regular expression that\ndenotes the range from the first funcname line that matches , up to the next\nfuncname line. : searches from the end of the previous -L range, if any,\notherwise from the start of file. ^: searches from the start of file. The\nfunction names are determined in the same way as git diff works out patch hunk headers\n(see Defining a custom hunk-header in gitattributes(5)).\n", "long": "--show-stats" }, { "name": "-l", "content": "Show long rev (Default: off).\n", "flag": "-l" }, { "name": "-t", "content": "Show raw timestamp (Default: off).\n", "flag": "-t" }, { "name": "-S ", "content": "Use revisions from revs-file instead of calling git-rev-list(1).\n\n--reverse ..\nWalk history forward instead of backward. Instead of showing the revision in which a line\nappeared, this shows the last revision in which a line has existed. This requires a range\nof revision like START..END where the path to blame exists in START. git blame --reverse\nSTART is taken as git blame --reverse START..HEAD for convenience.\n", "flag": "-S", "arg": "" }, { "name": "--first-parent", "content": "Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit. This option can be used\nto determine when a line was introduced to a particular integration branch, rather than\nwhen it was introduced to the history overall.\n", "long": "--first-parent" }, { "name": "-p, --porcelain", "content": "Show in a format designed for machine consumption.\n", "flag": "-p", "long": "--porcelain" }, { "name": "--line-porcelain", "content": "Show the porcelain format, but output commit information for each line, not just the\nfirst time a commit is referenced. Implies --porcelain.\n", "long": "--line-porcelain" }, { "name": "--incremental", "content": "Show the result incrementally in a format designed for machine consumption.\n\n--encoding=\nSpecifies the encoding used to output author names and commit summaries. Setting it to\nnone makes blame output unconverted data. For more information see the discussion about\nencoding in the git-log(1) manual page.\n", "long": "--incremental" }, { "name": "--contents ", "content": "When is not specified, the command annotates the changes starting backwards from\nthe working tree copy. This flag makes the command pretend as if the working tree copy\nhas the contents of the named file (specify - to make the command read from the standard\ninput).\n", "long": "--contents", "arg": "" }, { "name": "--date ", "content": "Specifies the format used to output dates. If --date is not provided, the value of the\nblame.date config variable is used. If the blame.date config variable is also not set,\nthe iso format is used. For supported values, see the discussion of the --date option at\ngit-log(1).\n\n--[no-]progress\nProgress status is reported on the standard error stream by default when it is attached\nto a terminal. This flag enables progress reporting even if not attached to a terminal.\nCan’t use --progress together with --porcelain or --incremental.\n\n-M[]\nDetect moved or copied lines within a file. When a commit moves or copies a block of\nlines (e.g. the original file has A and then B, and the commit changes it to B and then\nA), the traditional blame algorithm notices only half of the movement and typically\nblames the lines that were moved up (i.e. B) to the parent and assigns blame to the lines\nthat were moved down (i.e. A) to the child commit. With this option, both groups of lines\nare blamed on the parent by running extra passes of inspection.\n\n is optional but it is the lower bound on the number of alphanumeric characters that\nGit must detect as moving/copying within a file for it to associate those lines with the\nparent commit. The default value is 20.\n\n-C[]\nIn addition to -M, detect lines moved or copied from other files that were modified in\nthe same commit. This is useful when you reorganize your program and move code around\nacross files. When this option is given twice, the command additionally looks for copies\nfrom other files in the commit that creates the file. When this option is given three\ntimes, the command additionally looks for copies from other files in any commit.\n\n is optional but it is the lower bound on the number of alphanumeric characters that\nGit must detect as moving/copying between files for it to associate those lines with the\nparent commit. And the default value is 40. If there are more than one -C options given,\nthe argument of the last -C will take effect.\n", "long": "--date", "arg": "" }, { "name": "--ignore-rev ", "content": "Ignore changes made by the revision when assigning blame, as if the change never\nhappened. Lines that were changed or added by an ignored commit will be blamed on the\nprevious commit that changed that line or nearby lines. This option may be specified\nmultiple times to ignore more than one revision. If the blame.markIgnoredLines config\noption is set, then lines that were changed by an ignored commit and attributed to\nanother commit will be marked with a ? in the blame output. If the\nblame.markUnblamableLines config option is set, then those lines touched by an ignored\ncommit that we could not attribute to another revision are marked with a *.\n", "long": "--ignore-rev", "arg": "" }, { "name": "--ignore-revs-file ", "content": "Ignore revisions listed in file, which must be in the same format as an fsck.skipList.\nThis option may be repeated, and these files will be processed after any files specified\nwith the blame.ignoreRevsFile config option. An empty file name, \"\", will clear the list\nof revs from previously processed files.\n", "long": "--ignore-revs-file", "arg": "" }, { "name": "--color-lines", "content": "Color line annotations in the default format differently if they come from the same\ncommit as the preceding line. This makes it easier to distinguish code blocks introduced\nby different commits. The color defaults to cyan and can be adjusted using the\ncolor.blame.repeatedLines config option.\n", "long": "--color-lines" }, { "name": "--color-by-age", "content": "Color line annotations depending on the age of the line in the default format. The\ncolor.blame.highlightRecent config option controls what color is used for each range of\nage.\n", "long": "--color-by-age" }, { "name": "-h", "content": "Show help message.\n", "flag": "-h" }, { "name": "-c", "content": "Use the same output mode as git-annotate(1) (Default: off).\n", "flag": "-c" }, { "name": "--score-debug", "content": "Include debugging information related to the movement of lines between files (see -C) and\nlines moved within a file (see -M). The first number listed is the score. This is the\nnumber of alphanumeric characters detected as having been moved between or within files.\nThis must be above a certain threshold for git blame to consider those lines of code to\nhave been moved.\n", "long": "--score-debug" }, { "name": "-f, --show-name", "content": "Show the filename in the original commit. By default the filename is shown if there is\nany line that came from a file with a different name, due to rename detection.\n", "flag": "-f", "long": "--show-name" }, { "name": "-n, --show-number", "content": "Show the line number in the original commit (Default: off).\n", "flag": "-n", "long": "--show-number" }, { "name": "-s", "content": "Suppress the author name and timestamp from the output.\n", "flag": "-s" }, { "name": "-e, --show-email", "content": "Show the author email instead of author name (Default: off). This can also be controlled\nvia the blame.showEmail config option.\n", "flag": "-e", "long": "--show-email" }, { "name": "-w", "content": "Ignore whitespace when comparing the parent’s version and the child’s to find where the\nlines came from.\n\n--abbrev=\nInstead of using the default 7+1 hexadecimal digits as the abbreviated object name, use\n+1 digits, where is at least but ensures the commit object names are unique.\nNote that 1 column is used for a caret to mark the boundary commit.\n", "flag": "-w" } ] }, "THE DEFAULT FORMAT": { "content": "When neither --porcelain nor --incremental option is specified, git blame will output\nannotation for each line with:\n\n• abbreviated object name for the commit the line came from;\n\n• author ident (by default author name and date, unless -s or -e is specified); and\n\n• line number\n\nbefore the line contents.\n", "subsections": [] }, "THE PORCELAIN FORMAT": { "content": "In this format, each line is output after a header; the header at the minimum has the first\nline which has:\n\n• 40-byte SHA-1 of the commit the line is attributed to;\n\n• the line number of the line in the original file;\n\n• the line number of the line in the final file;\n\n• on a line that starts a group of lines from a different commit than the previous one, the\nnumber of lines in this group. On subsequent lines this field is absent.\n\nThis header line is followed by the following information at least once for each commit:\n\n• the author name (\"author\"), email (\"author-mail\"), time (\"author-time\"), and time zone\n(\"author-tz\"); similarly for committer.\n\n• the filename in the commit that the line is attributed to.\n\n• the first line of the commit log message (\"summary\").\n\nThe contents of the actual line is output after the above header, prefixed by a TAB. This is\nto allow adding more header elements later.\n\nThe porcelain format generally suppresses commit information that has already been seen. For\nexample, two lines that are blamed to the same commit will both be shown, but the details for\nthat commit will be shown only once. This is more efficient, but may require more state be\nkept by the reader. The --line-porcelain option can be used to output full commit information\nfor each line, allowing simpler (but less efficient) usage like:\n\n# count the number of lines attributed to each author\ngit blame --line-porcelain file |\nsed -n 's/^author //p' |\nsort | uniq -c | sort -rn\n", "subsections": [] }, "SPECIFYING RANGES": { "content": "Unlike git blame and git annotate in older versions of git, the extent of the annotation can\nbe limited to both line ranges and revision ranges. The -L option, which limits annotation to\na range of lines, may be specified multiple times.\n\nWhen you are interested in finding the origin for lines 40-60 for file foo, you can use the", "subsections": [ { "name": "-L", "content": "git blame -L 40,60 foo\ngit blame -L 40,+21 foo\n\nAlso you can use a regular expression to specify the line range:\n\ngit blame -L '/^sub hello {/,/^}$/' foo\n\nwhich limits the annotation to the body of the hello subroutine.\n\nWhen you are not interested in changes older than version v2.6.18, or changes older than 3\nweeks, you can use revision range specifiers similar to git rev-list:\n\ngit blame v2.6.18.. -- foo\ngit blame --since=3.weeks -- foo\n\nWhen revision range specifiers are used to limit the annotation, lines that have not changed\nsince the range boundary (either the commit v2.6.18 or the most recent commit that is more\nthan 3 weeks old in the above example) are blamed for that range boundary commit.\n\nA particularly useful way is to see if an added file has lines created by copy-and-paste from\nexisting files. Sometimes this indicates that the developer was being sloppy and did not\nrefactor the code properly. You can first find the commit that introduced the file with:\n\ngit log --diff-filter=A --pretty=short -- foo\n\nand then annotate the change between the commit and its parents, using commit^! notation:\n\ngit blame -C -C -f $commit^! -- foo\n", "flag": "-L" } ] }, "INCREMENTAL OUTPUT": { "content": "When called with --incremental option, the command outputs the result as it is built. The\noutput generally will talk about lines touched by more recent commits first (i.e. the lines\nwill be annotated out of order) and is meant to be used by interactive viewers.\n\nThe output format is similar to the Porcelain format, but it does not contain the actual\nlines from the file that is being annotated.\n\n1. Each blame entry always starts with a line of:\n\n<40-byte hex sha1> \n\nLine numbers count from 1.\n\n2. The first time that a commit shows up in the stream, it has various other information\nabout it printed out with a one-word tag at the beginning of each line describing the\nextra commit information (author, email, committer, dates, summary, etc.).\n\n3. Unlike the Porcelain format, the filename information is always given and terminates the\nentry:\n\n\"filename\" \n\nand thus it is really quite easy to parse for some line- and word-oriented parser (which\nshould be quite natural for most scripting languages).\n\nNote\nFor people who do parsing: to make it more robust, just ignore any lines between the\nfirst and last one (\"\" and \"filename\" lines) where you do not recognize the tag\nwords (or care about that particular one) at the beginning of the \"extended\ninformation\" lines. That way, if there is ever added information (like the commit\nencoding or extended commit commentary), a blame viewer will not care.\n", "subsections": [] }, "MAPPING AUTHORS": { "content": "See gitmailmap(5).\n", "subsections": [] }, "SEE ALSO": { "content": "git-annotate(1)\n", "subsections": [] }, "GIT": { "content": "Part of the git(1) suite\n\n\n\nGit 2.34.1 02/26/2026 GIT-BLAME(1)", "subsections": [] } }, "summary": "git-blame - Show what revision and author last modified each line of a file", "flags": [ { "flag": "-b", "long": null, "arg": null, "description": "Show blank SHA-1 for boundary commits. This can also be controlled via the blame.blankBoundary config option." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--root", "arg": null, "description": "Do not treat root commits as boundaries. This can also be controlled via the blame.showRoot config option." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--show-stats", "arg": null, "description": "Include additional statistics at the end of blame output. -L ,, -L : Annotate only the line range given by ,, or by the function name regex . May be specified multiple times. Overlapping ranges are allowed. and are optional. -L or -L , spans from to end of file. -L , spans from start of file to . and can take one of these forms: • number If or is a number, it specifies an absolute line number (lines count from 1). • /regex/ This form will use the first line matching the given POSIX regex. If is a regex, it will search from the end of the previous -L range, if any, otherwise from the start of file. If is ^/regex/, it will search from the start of file. If is a regex, it will search starting at the line given by . • +offset or -offset This is only valid for and will specify a number of lines before or after the line given by . If : is given in place of and , it is a regular expression that denotes the range from the first funcname line that matches , up to the next funcname line. : searches from the end of the previous -L range, if any, otherwise from the start of file. ^: searches from the start of file. The function names are determined in the same way as git diff works out patch hunk headers (see Defining a custom hunk-header in gitattributes(5))." }, { "flag": "-l", "long": null, "arg": null, "description": "Show long rev (Default: off)." }, { "flag": "-t", "long": null, "arg": null, "description": "Show raw timestamp (Default: off)." }, { "flag": "-S", "long": null, "arg": "", "description": "Use revisions from revs-file instead of calling git-rev-list(1). --reverse .. Walk history forward instead of backward. Instead of showing the revision in which a line appeared, this shows the last revision in which a line has existed. This requires a range of revision like START..END where the path to blame exists in START. git blame --reverse START is taken as git blame --reverse START..HEAD for convenience." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--first-parent", "arg": null, "description": "Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit. This option can be used to determine when a line was introduced to a particular integration branch, rather than when it was introduced to the history overall." }, { "flag": "-p", "long": "--porcelain", "arg": null, "description": "Show in a format designed for machine consumption." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--line-porcelain", "arg": null, "description": "Show the porcelain format, but output commit information for each line, not just the first time a commit is referenced. Implies --porcelain." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--incremental", "arg": null, "description": "Show the result incrementally in a format designed for machine consumption. --encoding= Specifies the encoding used to output author names and commit summaries. Setting it to none makes blame output unconverted data. For more information see the discussion about encoding in the git-log(1) manual page." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--contents", "arg": "", "description": "When is not specified, the command annotates the changes starting backwards from the working tree copy. This flag makes the command pretend as if the working tree copy has the contents of the named file (specify - to make the command read from the standard input)." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--date", "arg": "", "description": "Specifies the format used to output dates. If --date is not provided, the value of the blame.date config variable is used. If the blame.date config variable is also not set, the iso format is used. For supported values, see the discussion of the --date option at git-log(1). --[no-]progress Progress status is reported on the standard error stream by default when it is attached to a terminal. This flag enables progress reporting even if not attached to a terminal. Can’t use --progress together with --porcelain or --incremental. -M[] Detect moved or copied lines within a file. When a commit moves or copies a block of lines (e.g. the original file has A and then B, and the commit changes it to B and then A), the traditional blame algorithm notices only half of the movement and typically blames the lines that were moved up (i.e. B) to the parent and assigns blame to the lines that were moved down (i.e. A) to the child commit. With this option, both groups of lines are blamed on the parent by running extra passes of inspection. is optional but it is the lower bound on the number of alphanumeric characters that Git must detect as moving/copying within a file for it to associate those lines with the parent commit. The default value is 20. -C[] In addition to -M, detect lines moved or copied from other files that were modified in the same commit. This is useful when you reorganize your program and move code around across files. When this option is given twice, the command additionally looks for copies from other files in the commit that creates the file. When this option is given three times, the command additionally looks for copies from other files in any commit. is optional but it is the lower bound on the number of alphanumeric characters that Git must detect as moving/copying between files for it to associate those lines with the parent commit. And the default value is 40. If there are more than one -C options given, the argument of the last -C will take effect." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--ignore-rev", "arg": "", "description": "Ignore changes made by the revision when assigning blame, as if the change never happened. Lines that were changed or added by an ignored commit will be blamed on the previous commit that changed that line or nearby lines. This option may be specified multiple times to ignore more than one revision. If the blame.markIgnoredLines config option is set, then lines that were changed by an ignored commit and attributed to another commit will be marked with a ? in the blame output. If the blame.markUnblamableLines config option is set, then those lines touched by an ignored commit that we could not attribute to another revision are marked with a *." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--ignore-revs-file", "arg": "", "description": "Ignore revisions listed in file, which must be in the same format as an fsck.skipList. This option may be repeated, and these files will be processed after any files specified with the blame.ignoreRevsFile config option. An empty file name, \"\", will clear the list of revs from previously processed files." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--color-lines", "arg": null, "description": "Color line annotations in the default format differently if they come from the same commit as the preceding line. This makes it easier to distinguish code blocks introduced by different commits. The color defaults to cyan and can be adjusted using the color.blame.repeatedLines config option." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--color-by-age", "arg": null, "description": "Color line annotations depending on the age of the line in the default format. The color.blame.highlightRecent config option controls what color is used for each range of age." }, { "flag": "-h", "long": null, "arg": null, "description": "Show help message." }, { "flag": "-c", "long": null, "arg": null, "description": "Use the same output mode as git-annotate(1) (Default: off)." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--score-debug", "arg": null, "description": "Include debugging information related to the movement of lines between files (see -C) and lines moved within a file (see -M). The first number listed is the score. This is the number of alphanumeric characters detected as having been moved between or within files. This must be above a certain threshold for git blame to consider those lines of code to have been moved." }, { "flag": "-f", "long": "--show-name", "arg": null, "description": "Show the filename in the original commit. By default the filename is shown if there is any line that came from a file with a different name, due to rename detection." }, { "flag": "-n", "long": "--show-number", "arg": null, "description": "Show the line number in the original commit (Default: off)." }, { "flag": "-s", "long": null, "arg": null, "description": "Suppress the author name and timestamp from the output." }, { "flag": "-e", "long": "--show-email", "arg": null, "description": "Show the author email instead of author name (Default: off). This can also be controlled via the blame.showEmail config option." }, { "flag": "-w", "long": null, "arg": null, "description": "Ignore whitespace when comparing the parent’s version and the child’s to find where the lines came from. --abbrev= Instead of using the default 7+1 hexadecimal digits as the abbreviated object name, use +1 digits, where is at least but ensures the commit object names are unique. Note that 1 column is used for a caret to mark the boundary commit." } ], "examples": [], "see_also": [ { "name": "git-annotate", "section": "1", "url": "https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/git-annotate/1/json" } ] }