git-log(1) - man - phpMan

Che Dong

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.

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 log 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 log origin..HEAD
$ git log 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 log A B --not $(git merge-base --all A B)
$ git log A...B

The command takes options applicable to the git-rev-list(1) command to control what is shown
and how, and options applicable to the git-diff(1) command 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|auto|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. If auto is specified,
then if the output is going to a terminal, the ref names are shown as if short were
given, otherwise no ref names are shown. The option --decorate is short-hand for
--decorate=short. Default to configuration value of log.decorate if configured,
otherwise, auto.

--decorate-refs=<pattern>, --decorate-refs-exclude=<pattern>
If no --decorate-refs is given, pretend as if all refs were included. For each candidate,
do not use it for decoration if it matches any patterns given to --decorate-refs-exclude
or if it doesn’t match any of the patterns given to --decorate-refs. The
log.excludeDecoration config option allows excluding refs from the decorations, but an
explicit --decorate-refs pattern will override a match in log.excludeDecoration.

--source
Print out the ref name given on the command line by which each commit was reached.

--[no-]mailmap, --[no-]use-mailmap
Use mailmap file to map author and committer names and email addresses 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
Include a line “log size <number>” in the output for each commit, where <number> is the
length of that commit’s message in bytes. Intended to speed up tools that read log
messages from git log output by allowing them to allocate space in advance.

-L<start>,<end>:<file>, -L:<funcname>:<file>
Trace the evolution of the line range given by <start>,<end>, or by the function name
regex <funcname>, within the <file>. You may not give any pathspec limiters. This is
currently limited to a walk starting from a single revision, i.e., you may only give zero
or one positive revision arguments, and <start> and <end> (or <funcname>) must exist in
the starting revision. You can specify this option more than once. Implies --patch. Patch
output can be suppressed using --no-patch, but other diff formats (namely --raw,
--numstat, --shortstat, --dirstat, --summary, --name-only, --name-status, --check) are
not currently implemented.

<start> and <end> can take one of these forms:

• number

If <start> or <end> 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 <start> is a
regex, it will search from the end of the previous -L range, if any, otherwise from
the start of file. If <start> is ^/regex/, it will search from the start of file. If
<end> is a regex, it will search starting at the line given by <start>.

• +offset or -offset

This is only valid for <end> and will specify a number of lines before or after the
line given by <start>.

If :<funcname> is given in place of <start> and <end>, it is a regular expression that
denotes the range from the first funcname line that matches <funcname>, up to the next
funcname line. :<funcname> searches from the end of the previous -L range, if any,
otherwise from the start of file. ^:<funcname> 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)).

<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 description, additional commit limiting may be applied.

Using more options generally further limits the output (e.g. --since=<date1> limits to
commits newer than <date1>, and using it with --grep=<pattern> further limits to commits
whose log message has a line that matches <pattern>), unless otherwise noted.

Note that these are applied before commit ordering and formatting options, such as --reverse.

-<number>, -n <number>, --max-count=<number>
Limit the number of commits to output.

--skip=<number>
Skip number commits before starting to show the commit output.

--since=<date>, --after=<date>
Show commits more recent than a specific date.

--until=<date>, --before=<date>
Show commits older than a specific date.

--author=<pattern>, --committer=<pattern>
Limit the commits output to ones with author/committer header lines that match the
specified pattern (regular expression). With more than one --author=<pattern>, commits
whose author matches any of the given patterns are chosen (similarly for multiple
--committer=<pattern>).

--grep-reflog=<pattern>
Limit the commits output to ones with reflog entries that match the specified pattern
(regular expression). With more than one --grep-reflog, commits whose reflog message
matches any of the given patterns are chosen. It is an error to use this option unless
--walk-reflogs is in use.

--grep=<pattern>
Limit the commits output to ones with log message that matches the specified pattern
(regular expression). With more than one --grep=<pattern>, commits whose message matches
any of the given patterns are chosen (but see --all-match).

When --notes is in effect, the message from the notes is matched as if it were part of
the log message.

--all-match
Limit the commits output to ones that match all given --grep, instead of ones that match
at least one.

--invert-grep
Limit the commits output to ones with log message that do not match the pattern specified
with --grep=<pattern>.

-i, --regexp-ignore-case
Match the regular expression limiting patterns without regard to letter case.

--basic-regexp
Consider the limiting patterns to be basic regular expressions; this is the default.

-E, --extended-regexp
Consider the limiting patterns to be extended regular expressions instead of the default
basic regular expressions.

-F, --fixed-strings
Consider the limiting patterns to be fixed strings (don’t interpret pattern as a regular
expression).

-P, --perl-regexp
Consider the limiting patterns to be Perl-compatible regular expressions.

Support for these types of regular expressions is an optional compile-time dependency. If
Git wasn’t compiled with support for them providing this option will cause it to die.

--remove-empty
Stop when a given path disappears from the tree.

--merges
Print only merge commits. This is exactly the same as --min-parents=2.

--no-merges
Do not print commits with more than one parent. This is exactly the same as
--max-parents=1.

--min-parents=<number>, --max-parents=<number>, --no-min-parents, --no-max-parents
Show only commits which have at least (or at most) that many parent commits. In
particular, --max-parents=1 is the same as --no-merges, --min-parents=2 is the same as
--merges. --max-parents=0 gives all root commits and --min-parents=3 all octopus merges.

--no-min-parents and --no-max-parents reset these limits (to no limit) again. Equivalent
forms are --min-parents=0 (any commit has 0 or more parents) and --max-parents=-1
(negative numbers denote no upper limit).

--first-parent
Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit. This option can give a
better overview when viewing the evolution of a particular topic branch, because merges
into a topic branch tend to be only about adjusting to updated upstream from time to
time, and this option allows you to ignore the individual commits brought in to your
history by such a merge.

This option also changes default diff format for merge commits to first-parent, see
--diff-merges=first-parent for details.

--not
Reverses the meaning of the ^ prefix (or lack thereof) for all following revision
specifiers, up to the next --not.

--all
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/, along with HEAD, are listed on the command line as
<commit>.

--branches[=<pattern>]
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/heads are listed on the command line as <commit>. If
<pattern> is given, limit branches to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?,
*, or [, /* at the end is implied.

--tags[=<pattern>]
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/tags are listed on the command line as <commit>. If
<pattern> is given, limit tags to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, *,
or [, /* at the end is implied.

--remotes[=<pattern>]
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/remotes are listed on the command line as <commit>. If
<pattern> is given, limit remote-tracking branches to ones matching given shell glob. If
pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.

--glob=<glob-pattern>
Pretend as if all the refs matching shell glob <glob-pattern> are listed on the command
line as <commit>. Leading refs/, is automatically prepended if missing. If pattern lacks
?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.

--exclude=<glob-pattern>
Do not include refs matching <glob-pattern> that the next --all, --branches, --tags,
--remotes, or --glob would otherwise consider. Repetitions of this option accumulate
exclusion patterns up to the next --all, --branches, --tags, --remotes, or --glob option
(other options or arguments do not clear accumulated patterns).

The patterns given should not begin with refs/heads, refs/tags, or refs/remotes when
applied to --branches, --tags, or --remotes, respectively, and they must begin with refs/
when applied to --glob or --all. If a trailing /* is intended, it must be given
explicitly.

--reflog
Pretend as if all objects mentioned by reflogs are listed on the command line as
<commit>.

--alternate-refs
Pretend as if all objects mentioned as ref tips of alternate repositories were listed on
the command line. An alternate repository is any repository whose object directory is
specified in objects/info/alternates. The set of included objects may be modified by
core.alternateRefsCommand, etc. See git-config(1).

--single-worktree
By default, all working trees will be examined by the following options when there are
more than one (see git-worktree(1)): --all, --reflog and --indexed-objects. This option
forces them to examine the current working tree only.

--ignore-missing
Upon seeing an invalid object name in the input, pretend as if the bad input was not
given.

--bisect
Pretend as if the bad bisection ref refs/bisect/bad was listed and as if it was followed
by --not and the good bisection refs refs/bisect/good-* on the command line.

--stdin
In addition to the <commit> listed on the command line, read them from the standard
input. If a -- separator is seen, stop reading commits and start reading paths to limit
the result.

--cherry-mark
Like --cherry-pick (see below) but mark equivalent commits with = rather than omitting
them, and inequivalent ones with +.

--cherry-pick
Omit any commit that introduces the same change as another commit on the “other side”
when the set of commits are limited with symmetric difference.

For example, if you have two branches, A and B, a usual way to list all commits on only
one side of them is with --left-right (see the example below in the description of the
--left-right option). However, it shows the commits that were cherry-picked from the
other branch (for example, “3rd on b” may be cherry-picked from branch A). With this
option, such pairs of commits are excluded from the output.

--left-only, --right-only
List only commits on the respective side of a symmetric difference, i.e. only those which
would be marked < resp. > by --left-right.

For example, --cherry-pick --right-only A...B omits those commits from B which are in A
or are patch-equivalent to a commit in A. In other words, this lists the + commits from
git cherry A B. More precisely, --cherry-pick --right-only --no-merges gives the exact
list.

--cherry
A synonym for --right-only --cherry-mark --no-merges; useful to limit the output to the
commits on our side and mark those that have been applied to the other side of a forked
history with git log --cherry upstream...mybranch, similar to git cherry upstream
mybranch.

-g, --walk-reflogs
Instead of walking the commit ancestry chain, walk reflog entries from the most recent
one to older ones. When this option is used you cannot specify commits to exclude (that
is, ^commit, commit1..commit2, and commit1...commit2 notations cannot be used).

With --pretty format other than oneline and reference (for obvious reasons), this causes
the output to have two extra lines of information taken from the reflog. The reflog
designator in the output may be shown as ref@{Nth} (where Nth is the
reverse-chronological index in the reflog) or as ref@{timestamp} (with the timestamp for
that entry), depending on a few rules:

1. If the starting point is specified as ref@{Nth}, show the index format.

2. If the starting point was specified as ref@{now}, show the timestamp format.

3. If neither was used, but --date was given on the command line, show the timestamp in
the format requested by --date.

4. Otherwise, show the index format.

Under --pretty=oneline, the commit message is prefixed with this information on the same
line. This option cannot be combined with --reverse. See also git-reflog(1).

Under --pretty=reference, this information will not be shown at all.

--merge
After a failed merge, show refs that touch files having a conflict and don’t exist on all
heads to merge.

--boundary
Output excluded boundary commits. Boundary commits are prefixed with -.

History Simplification
Sometimes you are only interested in parts of the history, for example the commits modifying
a particular <path>. But there are two parts of History Simplification, one part is selecting
the commits and the other is how to do it, as there are various strategies to simplify the
history.

The following options select the commits to be shown:

<paths>
Commits modifying the given <paths> are selected.

--simplify-by-decoration
Commits that are referred by some branch or tag are selected.

Note that extra commits can be shown to give a meaningful history.

The following options affect the way the simplification is performed:

Default mode
Simplifies the history to the simplest history explaining the final state of the tree.
Simplest because it prunes some side branches if the end result is the same (i.e. merging
branches with the same content)

--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).

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.

--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
--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).

--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, or --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, use the ref to find the notes to display. The ref can
specify the full refname when it begins with refs/notes/; when it begins with notes/,
refs/ and otherwise refs/notes/ is prefixed to form a full name of the ref.

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.

--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 %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

--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.

--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.

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

This is designed to be as compact as possible.

• short

commit <hash>
Author: <author>

• medium

commit <hash>
Author: <author>
Date: <author date>

• full

commit <hash>
Author: <author>
Commit: <committer>

• fuller

commit <hash>
Author: <author>
AuthorDate: <author date>
Commit: <committer>
CommitDate: <committer date>

• 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>

• 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:<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:

• 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.

• 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)

%N
commit notes

%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.

The boolean options accept an optional value [=<BOOL>]. 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.

• key=<K>: 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.

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

DIFF FORMATTING
By default, git log does not generate any diff output. The options below can be used to show
the changes made by each commit.

Note that unless one of --diff-merges variants (including short -m, -c, and --cc options) is
explicitly given, merge commits will not show a diff, even if a diff format like --patch is
selected, nor will they match search options like -S. The exception is when --first-parent is
in use, in which case first-parent is the default format.

-p, -u, --patch
Generate patch (see section on generating patches).

-s, --no-patch
Suppress diff output. Useful for commands like git show that show the patch by default,
or to cancel the effect of --patch.

--diff-merges=(off|none), --no-diff-merges
Disable output of diffs for merge commits. Useful to override implied value.

--diff-merges=on, --diff-merges=m, -m
This option makes diff output for merge commits to be shown in the default format.
-m will produce the output only if -p is given as well. The default format could be
changed using log.diffMerges configuration parameter, which default value is
separate.

--diff-merges=first-parent, --diff-merges=1
This option makes merge commits show the full diff with respect to the first parent
only.

--diff-merges=separate
This makes merge commits show the full diff with respect to each of the parents.
Separate log entry and diff is generated for each parent.

--diff-merges=combined, --diff-merges=c, -c
With this option, diff output for a merge commit shows the differences from each of
the parents to the merge result simultaneously instead of showing pairwise diff
between a parent and the result one at a time. Furthermore, it lists only files which
were modified from all parents. -c implies -p.

--diff-merges=dense-combined, --diff-merges=cc, --cc
With this option the output produced by --diff-merges=combined is further compressed
by omitting uninteresting hunks whose contents in the parents have only two variants
and the merge result picks one of them without modification. --cc implies -p.

--combined-all-paths
This flag causes combined diffs (used for merge commits) to list the name of the file
from all parents. It thus only has effect when --diff-merges=[dense-]combined is in use,
and is likely only useful if filename changes are detected (i.e. when either rename or
copy detection have been requested).

-U<n>, --unified=<n>
Generate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of the usual three. Implies --patch.

--output=<file>
Output to a specific file instead of stdout.

--output-indicator-new=<char>, --output-indicator-old=<char>,
--output-indicator-context=<char>
Specify the character used to indicate new, old or context lines in the generated patch.
Normally they are +, - and ' ' respectively.

--raw
For each commit, show a summary of changes using the raw diff format. See the "RAW OUTPUT
FORMAT" section of git-diff(1). This is different from showing the log itself in raw
format, which you can achieve with --format=raw.

--patch-with-raw
Synonym for -p --raw.

-t
Show the tree objects in the diff output.

--indent-heuristic
Enable the heuristic that shifts diff hunk boundaries to make patches easier to read.
This is the default.

--no-indent-heuristic
Disable the indent heuristic.

--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.

--anchored=<text>
Generate a diff using the "anchored diff" algorithm.

This option may be specified more than once.

If a line exists in both the source and destination, exists only once, and starts with
this text, this algorithm attempts to prevent it from appearing as a deletion or addition
in the output. It uses the "patience diff" algorithm internally.

--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 the 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>.

--compact-summary
Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as file creations or
deletions ("new" or "gone", optionally "+l" if it’s a symlink) and mode changes ("+x" or
"-x" for adding or removing executable bit respectively) in diffstat. The information is
put between the filename part and the graph part. Implies --stat.

--numstat
Similar to --stat, but shows number of added and deleted lines in decimal notation and
pathname without abbreviation, to make it more machine friendly. For binary files,
outputs two - instead of saying 0 0.

--shortstat
Output only the last line of the --stat format containing total number of modified files,
as well as number of added and deleted lines.

-X[<param1,param2,...>], --dirstat[=<param1,param2,...>]
Output the distribution of relative amount of changes for each sub-directory. The
behavior of --dirstat can be customized by passing it a comma separated list of
parameters. The defaults are controlled by the diff.dirstat configuration variable (see
git-config(1)). The following parameters are available:

changes
Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that have been removed from the
source, or added to the destination. This ignores the amount of pure code movements
within a file. In other words, rearranging lines in a file is not counted as much as
other changes. This is the default behavior when 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.

--cumulative
Synonym for --dirstat=cumulative

--dirstat-by-file[=<param1,param2>...]
Synonym for --dirstat=files,param1,param2...

--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, pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted as explained for the
configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)).

--name-only
Show only names of changed files. The file names are often encoded in UTF-8. For more
information see the discussion about encoding in the git-log(1) manual page.

--name-status
Show only names and status of changed files. See the description of the --diff-filter
option on what the status letters mean. Just like --name-only the file names are often
encoded in UTF-8.

--submodule[=<format>]
Specify how differences in submodules are shown. When specifying --submodule=short the
short format is used. This format just shows the names of the commits at the beginning
and end of the range. When --submodule or --submodule=log is specified, the log format is
used. This format lists the commits in the range like git-submodule(1) summary does. When
--submodule=diff is specified, the diff format is used. This format shows an inline diff
of the changes in the submodule contents between the commit range. Defaults to
diff.submodule or the short format if the config option is unset.

--color[=<when>]
Show colored diff. --color (i.e. without =<when>) is the same as --color=always. <when>
can be one of always, never, or auto.

--no-color
Turn off colored diff. It is the same as --color=never.

--color-moved[=<mode>]
Moved lines of code are colored differently. The <mode> defaults to no if the option is
not given and to zebra if the option with no mode is given. The mode must be one of:

no
Moved lines are not highlighted.

default
Is a synonym for zebra. This may change to a more sensible mode in the future.

plain
Any line that is added in one location and was removed in another location will be
colored with color.diff.newMoved. Similarly color.diff.oldMoved will be used for
removed lines that are added somewhere else in the diff. This mode picks up any moved
line, but it is not very useful in a review to determine if a block of code was moved
without permutation.

blocks
Blocks of moved text of at least 20 alphanumeric characters are detected greedily.
The detected blocks are painted using either the color.diff.{old,new}Moved color.
Adjacent blocks cannot be told apart.

zebra
Blocks of moved text are detected as in blocks mode. The blocks are painted using
either the color.diff.{old,new}Moved color or color.diff.{old,new}MovedAlternative.
The change between the two colors indicates that a new block was detected.

dimmed-zebra
Similar to zebra, but additional dimming of uninteresting parts of moved code is
performed. The bordering lines of two adjacent blocks are considered interesting, the
rest is uninteresting. dimmed_zebra is a deprecated synonym.

--no-color-moved
Turn off move detection. This can be used to override configuration settings. It is the
same as --color-moved=no.

--color-moved-ws=<modes>
This configures how whitespace is ignored when performing the move detection for
--color-moved. These modes can be given as a comma separated list:

no
Do not ignore whitespace when performing move detection.

ignore-space-at-eol
Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.

ignore-space-change
Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace at line end, and
considers all other sequences of one or more whitespace characters to be equivalent.

ignore-all-space
Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences even if one line has
whitespace where the other line has none.

allow-indentation-change
Initially ignore any whitespace in the move detection, then group the moved code
blocks only into a block if the change in whitespace is the same per line. This is
incompatible with the other modes.

--no-color-moved-ws
Do not ignore whitespace when performing move detection. This can be used to override
configuration settings. It is the same as --color-moved-ws=no.

--word-diff[=<mode>]
Show a word diff, using the <mode> to delimit changed words. By default, words are
delimited by 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.

For example, --word-diff-regex=. will treat each character as a word and,
correspondingly, show differences character by character.

The regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration option, see gitattributes(5)
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.

--[no-]rename-empty
Whether to use empty blobs as rename source.

--check
Warn if changes introduce conflict markers or whitespace errors. What are considered
whitespace errors is controlled by core.whitespace configuration. By default, trailing
whitespaces (including lines that consist solely 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.

--ws-error-highlight=<kind>
Highlight whitespace errors in the context, old or new lines of the diff. Multiple values
are separated by comma, none resets previous values, default reset the list to new and
all is a shorthand for old,new,context. When this option is not given, and the
configuration variable diff.wsErrorHighlight is not set, only whitespace errors in new
lines are highlighted. The whitespace errors are colored with color.diff.whitespace.

--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.
Implies --patch.

--abbrev[=<n>]
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name in diff-raw format output and
diff-tree header lines, show the shortest prefix that is at least <n> hexdigits long that
uniquely refers the object. In diff-patch output format, --full-index takes higher
precedence, i.e. if --full-index is specified, full blob names will be shown regardless
of --abbrev. Non default number of digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.

-B[<n>][/<m>], --break-rewrites[=[<n>][/<m>]]
Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create. This serves two purposes:

It affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite of a file not as a series of
deletion and insertion mixed together with a very few lines that happen to match
textually as the context, but as a single deletion of everything old followed by a single
insertion of everything new, and the number m controls this aspect of the -B option
(defaults to 60%). -B/70% specifies that less than 30% of the 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%. The default similarity index is 50%.

-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 or git
apply; this is solely for people who want to just concentrate on reviewing the text after
the change. In addition, the output obviously lacks 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 involve some preliminary steps that can detect subsets of
renames/copies cheaply, followed by an exhaustive fallback portion that compares all
remaining unpaired destinations to all relevant sources. (For renames, only remaining
unpaired sources are relevant; for copies, all original sources are relevant.) For N
sources and destinations, this exhaustive check is O(N^2). This option prevents the
exhaustive portion of rename/copy detection from running if the number of
source/destination files involved exceeds the specified number. Defaults to
diff.renameLimit. Note that a value of 0 is treated as unlimited.

--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.

Also, these upper-case letters can be downcased to exclude. E.g. --diff-filter=ad
excludes added and deleted paths.

Note that not all diffs can feature all types. For instance, diffs from the index to the
working tree can never have Added entries (because the set of paths included in the diff
is limited by what is in the index). Similarly, copied and renamed entries cannot appear
if detection for those types is disabled.

-S<string>
Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of the specified string (i.e.
addition/deletion) in a file. Intended for the scripter’s use.

It is useful when you’re looking for an exact block of code (like a struct), and want to
know the history of that block since it first came into being: use the feature
iteratively to feed the interesting block in the preimage back into -S, and keep going
until you get the very first version of the block.

Binary files are searched as well.

-G<regex>
Look for differences whose patch text contains added/removed lines that match <regex>.

To illustrate the difference between -S<regex> --pickaxe-regex and -G<regex>, consider a
commit with the following diff in the same file:

+ return frotz(nitfol, two->ptr, 1, 0);
...
- hit = frotz(nitfol, mf2.ptr, 1, 0);

While git log -G"frotz\(nitfol" will show this commit, git log -S"frotz\(nitfol"
--pickaxe-regex will not (because the number of occurrences of that string did not
change).

Unless --text is supplied patches of binary files without a textconv filter will be
ignored.

See the pickaxe entry in gitdiffcore(7) for more information.

--find-object=<object-id>
Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of the specified object.
Similar to -S, just the argument is different in that it doesn’t search for a specific
string but for a specific object id.

The object can be a blob or a submodule commit. It implies the -t option in git-log to
also find trees.

--pickaxe-all
When -S or -G finds a change, show all the changes in that changeset, not just the files
that contain the change in <string>.

--pickaxe-regex
Treat the <string> given to -S as an extended POSIX regular expression to match.

-O<orderfile>
Control the order in which files appear in the output. This overrides the diff.orderFile
configuration variable (see git-config(1)). To cancel diff.orderFile, use -O/dev/null.

The output order is determined by the order of glob patterns in <orderfile>. All files
with pathnames that match the first pattern are output first, all files with pathnames
that match the second pattern (but not the first) are output next, and so on. All files
with pathnames that do not match any pattern are output last, as if there was an implicit
match-all pattern at the end of the file. If multiple pathnames have the same rank (they
match the same pattern but no earlier patterns), their output order relative to each
other is the normal order.

<orderfile> is parsed as follows:

• Blank lines are ignored, so they can be used as separators for readability.

• Lines starting with a hash ("#") are ignored, so they can be used for comments. Add a
backslash ("\") to the beginning of the pattern if it starts with a hash.

• Each other line contains a single pattern.

Patterns have the same syntax and semantics as patterns used for fnmatch(3) without the
FNM_PATHNAME flag, except a pathname also matches a pattern if removing any number of the
final pathname components matches the pattern. For example, the pattern "foo*bar" matches
"fooasdfbar" and "foo/bar/baz/asdf" but not "foobarx".

--skip-to=<file>, --rotate-to=<file>
Discard the files before the named <file> from the output (i.e. skip to), or move them
to the end of the output (i.e. rotate to). These were invented primarily for use of the
git difftool command, and may not be very useful otherwise.

-R
Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or on-disk file to tree contents.

--relative[=<path>], --no-relative
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. --no-relative can be used to
countermand both diff.relative config option and previous --relative.

-a, --text
Treat all files as text.

--ignore-cr-at-eol
Ignore carriage-return at the end of line when doing a comparison.

--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.

--ignore-blank-lines
Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.

-I<regex>, --ignore-matching-lines=<regex>
Ignore changes whose all lines match <regex>. This option may be specified more than
once.

--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. Defaults to diff.interHunkContext or 0 if the config
option is unset.

-W, --function-context
Show whole function as context lines for each change. 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)).

--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/".

--dst-prefix=<prefix>
Show the given destination prefix instead of "b/".

--no-prefix
Do not show any source or destination prefix.

--line-prefix=<prefix>
Prepend an additional prefix to every line of output.

--ita-invisible-in-index
By default entries added by "git add -N" appear as an existing empty file in "git diff"
and a new file in "git diff --cached". This option makes the entry appear as a new file
in "git diff" and non-existent in "git diff --cached". This option could be reverted with
--ita-visible-in-index. Both options are experimental and could be removed in future.

For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also gitdiffcore(7).

GENERATING PATCH TEXT WITH -P
Running git-diff(1), git-log(1), git-show(1), git-diff-index(1), git-diff-tree(1), or git-
diff-files(1) with the -p option produces patch text. You can customize the creation of patch
text via the GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF and the GIT_DIFF_OPTS environment variables (see git(1)), and
the diff attribute (see gitattributes(5)).

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 blob object names 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. Pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted as explained for the configuration
variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)).

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

5. Hunk headers mention the name of the function to which the hunk applies. See "Defining a
custom hunk-header" in gitattributes(5) for details of how to tailor to this to specific
languages.

COMBINED DIFF FORMAT
Any diff-generating command can take the -c or --cc option to produce a combined diff when
showing a merge. This is the default format when showing merges with git-diff(1) or git-
show(1). Note also that you can give suitable --diff-merges option to any of these commands
to force generation of diffs in specific format.

A "combined diff" format looks like this:

diff --combined describe.c
index fabadb8,cc95eb0..4866510
--- a/describe.c
+++ b/describe.c
@@@ -98,20 -98,12 +98,20 @@@
return (a_date > b_date) ? -1 : (a_date == b_date) ? 0 : 1;
}

- static void describe(char *arg)
-static void describe(struct commit *cmit, int last_one)
++static void describe(char *arg, int last_one)
{
+ unsigned char sha1[20];
+ struct commit *cmit;
struct commit_list *list;
static int initialized = 0;
struct commit_name *n;

+ if (get_sha1(arg, sha1) < 0)
+ usage(describe_usage);
+ cmit = lookup_commit_reference(sha1);
+ if (!cmit)
+ usage(describe_usage);
+
if (!initialized) {
initialized = 1;
for_each_ref(get_name);

1. It is preceded with a "git diff" header, that looks like this (when the -c option is
used):

diff --combined file

or like this (when the --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.

However, if the --combined-all-paths option is provided, instead of a two-line
from-file/to-file you get a N+1 line from-file/to-file header, where N is the number of
parents in the merge commit

--- a/file
--- a/file
--- a/file
+++ b/file

This extended format can be useful if rename or copy detection is active, to allow you to
see the original name of the file in different parents.

4. Chunk header format is modified to prevent people from accidentally feeding it to patch
-p1. Combined diff format was created for review of merge commit changes, and was not
meant to be applied. The change is similar to the change in the extended index header:

@@@ <from-file-range> <from-file-range> <to-file-range> @@@

There are (number of parents + 1) @ characters in the chunk header for combined diff
format.

Unlike the traditional unified diff format, which shows two files A and B with a single
column that has - (minus — appears in A but removed in B), + (plus — missing in A but added
to B), or " " (space — unchanged) prefix, this format compares two or more files file1,
file2,... with one file X, and shows how X differs from each of fileN. One column for each of
fileN is prepended to the output line to note how X’s line is different from it.

A - character in the column N means that the line appears in fileN but it does not appear in
the result. A + character in the column N means that the line appears in the 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 or 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 -L '/int main/',/^}/:main.c
Shows how the function main() in the file main.c evolved over time.

git log -3
Limits the number of commits to show to 3.

DISCUSSION
Git is to some extent character encoding agnostic.

• The contents of the blob objects are uninterpreted sequences of bytes. There is no
encoding translation at the core level.

• Path names are encoded in UTF-8 normalization form C. This applies to tree objects, the
index file, ref names, as well as path names in command line arguments, environment
variables and config files (.git/config (see git-config(1)), gitignore(5),
gitattributes(5) and gitmodules(5)).

Note that Git at the core level treats path names simply as sequences of non-NUL bytes,
there are no path name encoding conversions (except on Mac and Windows). Therefore, using
non-ASCII path names will mostly work even on platforms and file systems that use legacy
extended ASCII encodings. However, repositories created on such systems will not work
properly on UTF-8-based systems (e.g. Linux, Mac, Windows) and vice versa. Additionally,
many Git-based tools simply assume path names to be UTF-8 and will fail to display other
encodings correctly.

• Commit log messages are typically encoded in UTF-8, but other extended ASCII encodings
are also supported. This includes ISO-8859-x, CP125x and many others, but not UTF-16/32,
EBCDIC and CJK multi-byte encodings (GBK, Shift-JIS, Big5, EUC-x, CP9xx etc.).

Although we encourage that the commit log messages are encoded in UTF-8, both the core and
Git Porcelain are designed not to force UTF-8 on projects. If all participants of a
particular project find it more convenient to use legacy encodings, Git does not forbid it.
However, there are a few things to keep in mind.

1. git commit 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, and 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.

If the format is set to "auto:foo" and the pager is in use, format "foo" will be the used
for the date format. Otherwise "default" will be used.

log.follow
If true, git log will act as if the --follow option was used when a single <path> is
given. This has the same limitations as --follow, i.e. it cannot be used to follow
multiple files and does not work well on non-linear history.

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.

log.showSignature
If true, git log and related commands will act as if the --show-signature option was
passed to them.

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.

GIT
Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.34.1 02/26/2026 GIT-LOG(1)