{ "mode": "man", "parameter": "git-log", "section": "1", "url": "https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/git-log/1/json", "generated": "2026-05-30T05:14:22Z", "synopsis": "git log [] [] [[--] ...]", "sections": { "NAME": { "content": "git-log - Show commit logs\n", "subsections": [] }, "SYNOPSIS": { "content": "git log [] [] [[--] ...]\n\n", "subsections": [] }, "DESCRIPTION": { "content": "Shows the commit logs.\n\nList commits that are reachable by following the parent links from the given commit(s), but\nexclude commits that are reachable from the one(s) given with a ^ in front of them. The\noutput is given in reverse chronological order by default.\n\nYou can think of this as a set operation. Commits reachable from any of the commits given on\nthe command line form a set, and then commits reachable from any of the ones given with ^ in\nfront are subtracted from that set. The remaining commits are what comes out in the command’s\noutput. Various other options and paths parameters can be used to further limit the result.\n\nThus, the following command:\n\n$ git log foo bar ^baz\n\n\nmeans \"list all the commits which are reachable from foo or bar, but not from baz\".\n\nA special notation \"..\" can be used as a short-hand for \"^\n\". For example, either of the following may be used interchangeably:\n\n$ git log origin..HEAD\n$ git log HEAD ^origin\n\n\nAnother special notation is \"...\" which is useful for merges. The resulting\nset of commits is the symmetric difference between the two operands. The following two\ncommands are equivalent:\n\n$ git log A B --not $(git merge-base --all A B)\n$ git log A...B\n\n\nThe command takes options applicable to the git-rev-list(1) command to control what is shown\nand how, and options applicable to the git-diff(1) command to control how the changes each\ncommit introduces are shown.\n", "subsections": [] }, "OPTIONS": { "content": "", "subsections": [ { "name": "--follow", "content": "Continue listing the history of a file beyond renames (works only for a single file).\n", "long": "--follow" }, { "name": "--no-decorate, --decorate[=short|full|auto|no]", "content": "Print out the ref names of any commits that are shown. If short is specified, the ref\nname prefixes refs/heads/, refs/tags/ and refs/remotes/ will not be printed. If full is\nspecified, the full ref name (including prefix) will be printed. If auto is specified,\nthen if the output is going to a terminal, the ref names are shown as if short were\ngiven, otherwise no ref names are shown. The option --decorate is short-hand for\n--decorate=short. Default to configuration value of log.decorate if configured,\notherwise, auto.\n\n--decorate-refs=, --decorate-refs-exclude=\nIf no --decorate-refs is given, pretend as if all refs were included. For each candidate,\ndo not use it for decoration if it matches any patterns given to --decorate-refs-exclude\nor if it doesn’t match any of the patterns given to --decorate-refs. The\nlog.excludeDecoration config option allows excluding refs from the decorations, but an\nexplicit --decorate-refs pattern will override a match in log.excludeDecoration.\n", "long": "--no-decorate" }, { "name": "--source", "content": "Print out the ref name given on the command line by which each commit was reached.\n\n--[no-]mailmap, --[no-]use-mailmap\nUse mailmap file to map author and committer names and email addresses to canonical real\nnames and email addresses. See git-shortlog(1).\n", "long": "--source" }, { "name": "--full-diff", "content": "Without this flag, git log -p ... shows commits that touch the specified paths,\nand diffs about the same specified paths. With this, the full diff is shown for commits\nthat touch the specified paths; this means that \"...\" limits only commits, and\ndoesn’t limit diff for those commits.\n\nNote that this affects all diff-based output types, e.g. those produced by --stat, etc.\n", "long": "--full-diff" }, { "name": "--log-size", "content": "Include a line “log size ” in the output for each commit, where is the\nlength of that commit’s message in bytes. Intended to speed up tools that read log\nmessages from git log output by allowing them to allocate space in advance.\n\n-L,:, -L::\nTrace the evolution of the line range given by ,, or by the function name\nregex , within the . You may not give any pathspec limiters. This is\ncurrently limited to a walk starting from a single revision, i.e., you may only give zero\nor one positive revision arguments, and and (or ) must exist in\nthe starting revision. You can specify this option more than once. Implies --patch. Patch\noutput can be suppressed using --no-patch, but other diff formats (namely --raw,\n--numstat, --shortstat, --dirstat, --summary, --name-only, --name-status, --check) are\nnot currently implemented.\n\n and can take one of these forms:\n\n• number\n\nIf or is a number, it specifies an absolute line number (lines count\nfrom 1).\n\n• /regex/\n\nThis form will use the first line matching the given POSIX regex. If is a\nregex, it will search from the end of the previous -L range, if any, otherwise from\nthe start of file. If is ^/regex/, it will search from the start of file. If\n is a regex, it will search starting at the line given by .\n\n• +offset or -offset\n\nThis is only valid for and will specify a number of lines before or after the\nline given by .\n\nIf : is given in place of and , it is a regular expression that\ndenotes the range from the first funcname line that matches , up to the next\nfuncname line. : searches from the end of the previous -L range, if any,\notherwise from the start of file. ^: searches from the start of file. The\nfunction names are determined in the same way as git diff works out patch hunk headers\n(see Defining a custom hunk-header in gitattributes(5)).\n\n\nShow only commits in the specified revision range. When no is specified,\nit defaults to HEAD (i.e. the whole history leading to the current commit). origin..HEAD\nspecifies all the commits reachable from the current commit (i.e. HEAD), but not from\norigin. For a complete list of ways to spell , see the Specifying Ranges\nsection of gitrevisions(7).\n\n[--] ...\nShow only commits that are enough to explain how the files that match the specified paths\ncame to be. See History Simplification below for details and other simplification modes.\n\nPaths may need to be prefixed with -- to separate them from options or the revision\nrange, when confusion arises.\n", "long": "--log-size" }, { "name": "Commit Limiting", "content": "Besides specifying a range of commits that should be listed using the special notations\nexplained in the description, additional commit limiting may be applied.\n\nUsing more options generally further limits the output (e.g. --since= limits to\ncommits newer than , and using it with --grep= further limits to commits\nwhose log message has a line that matches ), unless otherwise noted.\n\nNote that these are applied before commit ordering and formatting options, such as --reverse.\n\n-, -n , --max-count=\nLimit the number of commits to output.\n\n--skip=\nSkip number commits before starting to show the commit output.\n\n--since=, --after=\nShow commits more recent than a specific date.\n\n--until=, --before=\nShow commits older than a specific date.\n\n--author=, --committer=\nLimit the commits output to ones with author/committer header lines that match the\nspecified pattern (regular expression). With more than one --author=, commits\nwhose author matches any of the given patterns are chosen (similarly for multiple\n--committer=).\n\n--grep-reflog=\nLimit the commits output to ones with reflog entries that match the specified pattern\n(regular expression). With more than one --grep-reflog, commits whose reflog message\nmatches any of the given patterns are chosen. It is an error to use this option unless\n--walk-reflogs is in use.\n\n--grep=\nLimit the commits output to ones with log message that matches the specified pattern\n(regular expression). With more than one --grep=, commits whose message matches\nany of the given patterns are chosen (but see --all-match).\n\nWhen --notes is in effect, the message from the notes is matched as if it were part of\nthe log message.\n" }, { "name": "--all-match", "content": "Limit the commits output to ones that match all given --grep, instead of ones that match\nat least one.\n", "long": "--all-match" }, { "name": "--invert-grep", "content": "Limit the commits output to ones with log message that do not match the pattern specified\nwith --grep=.\n", "long": "--invert-grep" }, { "name": "-i, --regexp-ignore-case", "content": "Match the regular expression limiting patterns without regard to letter case.\n", "flag": "-i", "long": "--regexp-ignore-case" }, { "name": "--basic-regexp", "content": "Consider the limiting patterns to be basic regular expressions; this is the default.\n", "long": "--basic-regexp" }, { "name": "-E, --extended-regexp", "content": "Consider the limiting patterns to be extended regular expressions instead of the default\nbasic regular expressions.\n", "flag": "-E", "long": "--extended-regexp" }, { "name": "-F, --fixed-strings", "content": "Consider the limiting patterns to be fixed strings (don’t interpret pattern as a regular\nexpression).\n", "flag": "-F", "long": "--fixed-strings" }, { "name": "-P, --perl-regexp", "content": "Consider the limiting patterns to be Perl-compatible regular expressions.\n\nSupport for these types of regular expressions is an optional compile-time dependency. If\nGit wasn’t compiled with support for them providing this option will cause it to die.\n", "flag": "-P", "long": "--perl-regexp" }, { "name": "--remove-empty", "content": "Stop when a given path disappears from the tree.\n", "long": "--remove-empty" }, { "name": "--merges", "content": "Print only merge commits. This is exactly the same as --min-parents=2.\n", "long": "--merges" }, { "name": "--no-merges", "content": "Do not print commits with more than one parent. This is exactly the same as\n--max-parents=1.\n\n--min-parents=, --max-parents=, --no-min-parents, --no-max-parents\nShow only commits which have at least (or at most) that many parent commits. In\nparticular, --max-parents=1 is the same as --no-merges, --min-parents=2 is the same as\n--merges. --max-parents=0 gives all root commits and --min-parents=3 all octopus merges.\n\n--no-min-parents and --no-max-parents reset these limits (to no limit) again. Equivalent\nforms are --min-parents=0 (any commit has 0 or more parents) and --max-parents=-1\n(negative numbers denote no upper limit).\n", "long": "--no-merges" }, { "name": "--first-parent", "content": "Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit. This option can give a\nbetter overview when viewing the evolution of a particular topic branch, because merges\ninto a topic branch tend to be only about adjusting to updated upstream from time to\ntime, and this option allows you to ignore the individual commits brought in to your\nhistory by such a merge.\n\nThis option also changes default diff format for merge commits to first-parent, see\n--diff-merges=first-parent for details.\n", "long": "--first-parent" }, { "name": "--not", "content": "Reverses the meaning of the ^ prefix (or lack thereof) for all following revision\nspecifiers, up to the next --not.\n", "long": "--not" }, { "name": "--all", "content": "Pretend as if all the refs in refs/, along with HEAD, are listed on the command line as\n.\n\n--branches[=]\nPretend as if all the refs in refs/heads are listed on the command line as . If\n is given, limit branches to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?,\n*, or [, /* at the end is implied.\n\n--tags[=]\nPretend as if all the refs in refs/tags are listed on the command line as . If\n is given, limit tags to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, *,\nor [, /* at the end is implied.\n\n--remotes[=]\nPretend as if all the refs in refs/remotes are listed on the command line as . If\n is given, limit remote-tracking branches to ones matching given shell glob. If\npattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.\n\n--glob=\nPretend as if all the refs matching shell glob are listed on the command\nline as . Leading refs/, is automatically prepended if missing. If pattern lacks\n?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.\n\n--exclude=\nDo not include refs matching that the next --all, --branches, --tags,\n--remotes, or --glob would otherwise consider. Repetitions of this option accumulate\nexclusion patterns up to the next --all, --branches, --tags, --remotes, or --glob option\n(other options or arguments do not clear accumulated patterns).\n\nThe patterns given should not begin with refs/heads, refs/tags, or refs/remotes when\napplied to --branches, --tags, or --remotes, respectively, and they must begin with refs/\nwhen applied to --glob or --all. If a trailing /* is intended, it must be given\nexplicitly.\n", "long": "--all" }, { "name": "--reflog", "content": "Pretend as if all objects mentioned by reflogs are listed on the command line as\n.\n", "long": "--reflog" }, { "name": "--alternate-refs", "content": "Pretend as if all objects mentioned as ref tips of alternate repositories were listed on\nthe command line. An alternate repository is any repository whose object directory is\nspecified in objects/info/alternates. The set of included objects may be modified by\ncore.alternateRefsCommand, etc. See git-config(1).\n", "long": "--alternate-refs" }, { "name": "--single-worktree", "content": "By default, all working trees will be examined by the following options when there are\nmore than one (see git-worktree(1)): --all, --reflog and --indexed-objects. This option\nforces them to examine the current working tree only.\n", "long": "--single-worktree" }, { "name": "--ignore-missing", "content": "Upon seeing an invalid object name in the input, pretend as if the bad input was not\ngiven.\n", "long": "--ignore-missing" }, { "name": "--bisect", "content": "Pretend as if the bad bisection ref refs/bisect/bad was listed and as if it was followed\nby --not and the good bisection refs refs/bisect/good-* on the command line.\n", "long": "--bisect" }, { "name": "--stdin", "content": "In addition to the listed on the command line, read them from the standard\ninput. If a -- separator is seen, stop reading commits and start reading paths to limit\nthe result.\n", "long": "--stdin" }, { "name": "--cherry-mark", "content": "Like --cherry-pick (see below) but mark equivalent commits with = rather than omitting\nthem, and inequivalent ones with +.\n", "long": "--cherry-mark" }, { "name": "--cherry-pick", "content": "Omit any commit that introduces the same change as another commit on the “other side”\nwhen the set of commits are limited with symmetric difference.\n\nFor example, if you have two branches, A and B, a usual way to list all commits on only\none side of them is with --left-right (see the example below in the description of the\n--left-right option). However, it shows the commits that were cherry-picked from the\nother branch (for example, “3rd on b” may be cherry-picked from branch A). With this\noption, such pairs of commits are excluded from the output.\n", "long": "--cherry-pick" }, { "name": "--left-only, --right-only", "content": "List only commits on the respective side of a symmetric difference, i.e. only those which\nwould be marked < resp. > by --left-right.\n\nFor example, --cherry-pick --right-only A...B omits those commits from B which are in A\nor are patch-equivalent to a commit in A. In other words, this lists the + commits from\ngit cherry A B. More precisely, --cherry-pick --right-only --no-merges gives the exact\nlist.\n", "long": "--right-only" }, { "name": "--cherry", "content": "A synonym for --right-only --cherry-mark --no-merges; useful to limit the output to the\ncommits on our side and mark those that have been applied to the other side of a forked\nhistory with git log --cherry upstream...mybranch, similar to git cherry upstream\nmybranch.\n", "long": "--cherry" }, { "name": "-g, --walk-reflogs", "content": "Instead of walking the commit ancestry chain, walk reflog entries from the most recent\none to older ones. When this option is used you cannot specify commits to exclude (that\nis, ^commit, commit1..commit2, and commit1...commit2 notations cannot be used).\n\nWith --pretty format other than oneline and reference (for obvious reasons), this causes\nthe output to have two extra lines of information taken from the reflog. The reflog\ndesignator in the output may be shown as ref@{Nth} (where Nth is the\nreverse-chronological index in the reflog) or as ref@{timestamp} (with the timestamp for\nthat entry), depending on a few rules:\n\n1. If the starting point is specified as ref@{Nth}, show the index format.\n\n2. If the starting point was specified as ref@{now}, show the timestamp format.\n\n3. If neither was used, but --date was given on the command line, show the timestamp in\nthe format requested by --date.\n\n4. Otherwise, show the index format.\n\nUnder --pretty=oneline, the commit message is prefixed with this information on the same\nline. This option cannot be combined with --reverse. See also git-reflog(1).\n\nUnder --pretty=reference, this information will not be shown at all.\n", "flag": "-g", "long": "--walk-reflogs" }, { "name": "--merge", "content": "After a failed merge, show refs that touch files having a conflict and don’t exist on all\nheads to merge.\n", "long": "--merge" }, { "name": "--boundary", "content": "Output excluded boundary commits. Boundary commits are prefixed with -.\n", "long": "--boundary" }, { "name": "History Simplification", "content": "Sometimes you are only interested in parts of the history, for example the commits modifying\na particular . But there are two parts of History Simplification, one part is selecting\nthe commits and the other is how to do it, as there are various strategies to simplify the\nhistory.\n\nThe following options select the commits to be shown:\n\n\nCommits modifying the given are selected.\n" }, { "name": "--simplify-by-decoration", "content": "Commits that are referred by some branch or tag are selected.\n\nNote that extra commits can be shown to give a meaningful history.\n\nThe following options affect the way the simplification is performed:\n\nDefault mode\nSimplifies the history to the simplest history explaining the final state of the tree.\nSimplest because it prunes some side branches if the end result is the same (i.e. merging\nbranches with the same content)\n", "long": "--simplify-by-decoration" }, { "name": "--show-pulls", "content": "Include all commits from the default mode, but also any merge commits that are not\nTREESAME to the first parent but are TREESAME to a later parent. This mode is helpful for\nshowing the merge commits that \"first introduced\" a change to a branch.\n", "long": "--show-pulls" }, { "name": "--full-history", "content": "Same as the default mode, but does not prune some history.\n", "long": "--full-history" }, { "name": "--dense", "content": "Only the selected commits are shown, plus some to have a meaningful history.\n", "long": "--dense" }, { "name": "--sparse", "content": "All commits in the simplified history are shown.\n", "long": "--sparse" }, { "name": "--simplify-merges", "content": "Additional option to --full-history to remove some needless merges from the resulting\nhistory, as there are no selected commits contributing to this merge.\n", "long": "--simplify-merges" }, { "name": "--ancestry-path", "content": "When given a range of commits to display (e.g. commit1..commit2 or commit2 ^commit1),\nonly display commits that exist directly on the ancestry chain between the commit1 and\ncommit2, i.e. commits that are both descendants of commit1, and ancestors of commit2.\n\nA more detailed explanation follows.\n\nSuppose you specified foo as the . We shall call commits that modify foo !TREESAME,\nand the rest TREESAME. (In a diff filtered for foo, they look different and equal,\nrespectively.)\n\nIn the following, we will always refer to the same example history to illustrate the\ndifferences between simplification settings. We assume that you are filtering for a file foo\nin this commit graph:\n\n.-A---M---N---O---P---Q\n/ / / / / /\nI B C D E Y\n\\ / / / / /\n`-------------' X\n\n\nThe horizontal line of history A---Q is taken to be the first parent of each merge. The\ncommits are:\n\n• I is the initial commit, in which foo exists with contents “asdf”, and a file quux exists\nwith contents “quux”. Initial commits are compared to an empty tree, so I is !TREESAME.\n\n• In A, foo contains just “foo”.\n\n• B contains the same change as A. Its merge M is trivial and hence TREESAME to all\nparents.\n\n• C does not change foo, but its merge N changes it to “foobar”, so it is not TREESAME to\nany parent.\n\n• D sets foo to “baz”. Its merge O combines the strings from N and D to “foobarbaz”; i.e.,\nit is not TREESAME to any parent.\n\n• E changes quux to “xyzzy”, and its merge P combines the strings to “quux xyzzy”. P is\nTREESAME to O, but not to E.\n\n• X is an independent root commit that added a new file side, and Y modified it. Y is\nTREESAME to X. Its merge Q added side to P, and Q is TREESAME to P, but not to Y.\n\nrev-list walks backwards through history, including or excluding commits based on whether\n--full-history and/or parent rewriting (via --parents or --children) are used. The following\nsettings are available.\n\nDefault mode\nCommits are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent (though this can be changed,\nsee --sparse below). If the commit was a merge, and it was TREESAME to one parent, follow\nonly that parent. (Even if there are several TREESAME parents, follow only one of them.)\nOtherwise, follow all parents.\n\nThis results in:\n\n.-A---N---O\n/ / /\nI---------D\n\nNote how the rule to only follow the TREESAME parent, if one is available, removed B from\nconsideration entirely. C was considered via N, but is TREESAME. Root commits are\ncompared to an empty tree, so I is !TREESAME.\n\nParent/child relations are only visible with --parents, but that does not affect the\ncommits selected in default mode, so we have shown the parent lines.\n\n--full-history without parent rewriting\nThis mode differs from the default in one point: always follow all parents of a merge,\neven if it is TREESAME to one of them. Even if more than one side of the merge has\ncommits that are included, this does not imply that the merge itself is! In the example,\nwe get\n\nI A B N D O P Q\n\nM was excluded because it is TREESAME to both parents. E, C and B were all walked, but\nonly B was !TREESAME, so the others do not appear.\n\nNote that without parent rewriting, it is not really possible to talk about the\nparent/child relationships between the commits, so we show them disconnected.\n\n--full-history with parent rewriting\nOrdinary commits are only included if they are !TREESAME (though this can be changed, see\n--sparse below).\n\nMerges are always included. However, their parent list is rewritten: Along each parent,\nprune away commits that are not included themselves. This results in\n\n.-A---M---N---O---P---Q\n/ / / / /\nI B / D /\n\\ / / / /\n`-------------'\n\nCompare to --full-history without rewriting above. Note that E was pruned away because it\nis TREESAME, but the parent list of P was rewritten to contain E's parent I. The same\nhappened for C and N, and X, Y and Q.\n\nIn addition to the above settings, you can change whether TREESAME affects inclusion:\n", "long": "--ancestry-path" }, { "name": "--dense", "content": "Commits that are walked are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent.\n", "long": "--dense" }, { "name": "--sparse", "content": "All commits that are walked are included.\n\nNote that without --full-history, this still simplifies merges: if one of the parents is\nTREESAME, we follow only that one, so the other sides of the merge are never walked.\n", "long": "--sparse" }, { "name": "--simplify-merges", "content": "First, build a history graph in the same way that --full-history with parent rewriting\ndoes (see above).\n\nThen simplify each commit C to its replacement C' in the final history according to the\nfollowing rules:\n\n• Set C' to C.\n\n• Replace each parent P of C' with its simplification P'. In the process, drop parents\nthat are ancestors of other parents or that are root commits TREESAME to an empty\ntree, and remove duplicates, but take care to never drop all parents that we are\nTREESAME to.\n\n• If after this parent rewriting, C' is a root or merge commit (has zero or >1\nparents), a boundary commit, or !TREESAME, it remains. Otherwise, it is replaced with\nits only parent.\n\nThe effect of this is best shown by way of comparing to --full-history with parent\nrewriting. The example turns into:\n\n.-A---M---N---O\n/ / /\nI B D\n\\ / /\n`---------'\n\nNote the major differences in N, P, and Q over --full-history:\n\n• N's parent list had I removed, because it is an ancestor of the other parent M.\nStill, N remained because it is !TREESAME.\n\n• P's parent list similarly had I removed. P was then removed completely, because it\nhad one parent and is TREESAME.\n\n• Q's parent list had Y simplified to X. X was then removed, because it was a TREESAME\nroot. Q was then removed completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME.\n\nThere is another simplification mode available:\n", "long": "--simplify-merges" }, { "name": "--ancestry-path", "content": "Limit the displayed commits to those directly on the ancestry chain between the “from”\nand “to” commits in the given commit range. I.e. only display commits that are ancestor\nof the “to” commit and descendants of the “from” commit.\n\nAs an example use case, consider the following commit history:\n\nD---E-------F\n/ \\ \\\nB---C---G---H---I---J\n/ \\\nA-------K---------------L--M\n\nA regular D..M computes the set of commits that are ancestors of M, but excludes the ones\nthat are ancestors of D. This is useful to see what happened to the history leading to M\nsince D, in the sense that “what does M have that did not exist in D”. The result in this\nexample would be all the commits, except A and B (and D itself, of course).\n\nWhen we want to find out what commits in M are contaminated with the bug introduced by D\nand need fixing, however, we might want to view only the subset of D..M that are actually\ndescendants of D, i.e. excluding C and K. This is exactly what the --ancestry-path option\ndoes. Applied to the D..M range, it results in:\n\nE-------F\n\\ \\\nG---H---I---J\n\\\nL--M\n\n\nBefore discussing another option, --show-pulls, we need to create a new example history.\n\nA common problem users face when looking at simplified history is that a commit they know\nchanged a file somehow does not appear in the file’s simplified history. Let’s demonstrate a\nnew example and show how options such as --full-history and --simplify-merges works in that\ncase:\n\n.-A---M-----C--N---O---P\n/ / \\ \\ \\/ / /\nI B \\ R-'`-Z' /\n\\ / \\/ /\n\\ / /\\ /\n`---X--' `---Y--'\n\n\nFor this example, suppose I created file.txt which was modified by A, B, and X in different\nways. The single-parent commits C, Z, and Y do not change file.txt. The merge commit M was\ncreated by resolving the merge conflict to include both changes from A and B and hence is not\nTREESAME to either. The merge commit R, however, was created by ignoring the contents of\nfile.txt at M and taking only the contents of file.txt at X. Hence, R is TREESAME to X but\nnot M. Finally, the natural merge resolution to create N is to take the contents of file.txt\nat R, so N is TREESAME to R but not C. The merge commits O and P are TREESAME to their first\nparents, but not to their second parents, Z and Y respectively.\n\nWhen using the default mode, N and R both have a TREESAME parent, so those edges are walked\nand the others are ignored. The resulting history graph is:\n\nI---X\n\n\nWhen using --full-history, Git walks every edge. This will discover the commits A and B and\nthe merge M, but also will reveal the merge commits O and P. With parent rewriting, the\nresulting graph is:\n\n.-A---M--------N---O---P\n/ / \\ \\ \\/ / /\nI B \\ R-'`--' /\n\\ / \\/ /\n\\ / /\\ /\n`---X--' `------'\n\n\nHere, the merge commits O and P contribute extra noise, as they did not actually contribute a\nchange to file.txt. They only merged a topic that was based on an older version of file.txt.\nThis is a common issue in repositories using a workflow where many contributors work in\nparallel and merge their topic branches along a single trunk: manu unrelated merges appear in\nthe --full-history results.\n\nWhen using the --simplify-merges option, the commits O and P disappear from the results. This\nis because the rewritten second parents of O and P are reachable from their first parents.\nThose edges are removed and then the commits look like single-parent commits that are\nTREESAME to their parent. This also happens to the commit N, resulting in a history view as\nfollows:\n\n.-A---M--.\n/ / \\\nI B R\n\\ / /\n\\ / /\n`---X--'\n\n\nIn this view, we see all of the important single-parent changes from A, B, and X. We also see\nthe carefully-resolved merge M and the not-so-carefully-resolved merge R. This is usually\nenough information to determine why the commits A and B \"disappeared\" from history in the\ndefault view. However, there are a few issues with this approach.\n\nThe first issue is performance. Unlike any previous option, the --simplify-merges option\nrequires walking the entire commit history before returning a single result. This can make\nthe option difficult to use for very large repositories.\n\nThe second issue is one of auditing. When many contributors are working on the same\nrepository, it is important which merge commits introduced a change into an important branch.\nThe problematic merge R above is not likely to be the merge commit that was used to merge\ninto an important branch. Instead, the merge N was used to merge R and X into the important\nbranch. This commit may have information about why the change X came to override the changes\nfrom A and B in its commit message.\n", "long": "--ancestry-path" }, { "name": "--show-pulls", "content": "In addition to the commits shown in the default history, show each merge commit that is\nnot TREESAME to its first parent but is TREESAME to a later parent.\n\nWhen a merge commit is included by --show-pulls, the merge is treated as if it \"pulled\"\nthe change from another branch. When using --show-pulls on this example (and no other\noptions) the resulting graph is:\n\nI---X---R---N\n\nHere, the merge commits R and N are included because they pulled the commits X and R into\nthe base branch, respectively. These merges are the reason the commits A and B do not\nappear in the default history.\n\nWhen --show-pulls is paired with --simplify-merges, the graph includes all of the\nnecessary information:\n\n.-A---M--. N\n/ / \\ /\nI B R\n\\ / /\n\\ / /\n`---X--'\n\nNotice that since M is reachable from R, the edge from N to M was simplified away.\nHowever, N still appears in the history as an important commit because it \"pulled\" the\nchange R into the main branch.\n\nThe --simplify-by-decoration option allows you to view only the big picture of the topology\nof the history, by omitting commits that are not referenced by tags. Commits are marked as\n!TREESAME (in other words, kept after history simplification rules described above) if (1)\nthey are referenced by tags, or (2) they change the contents of the paths given on the\ncommand line. All other commits are marked as TREESAME (subject to be simplified away).\n", "long": "--show-pulls" }, { "name": "Commit Ordering", "content": "By default, the commits are shown in reverse chronological order.\n" }, { "name": "--date-order", "content": "Show no parents before all of its children are shown, but otherwise show commits in the\ncommit timestamp order.\n", "long": "--date-order" }, { "name": "--author-date-order", "content": "Show no parents before all of its children are shown, but otherwise show commits in the\nauthor timestamp order.\n", "long": "--author-date-order" }, { "name": "--topo-order", "content": "Show no parents before all of its children are shown, and avoid showing commits on\nmultiple lines of history intermixed.\n\nFor example, in a commit history like this:\n\n---1----2----4----7\n\\ \\\n3----5----6----8---\n\nwhere the numbers denote the order of commit timestamps, git rev-list and friends with\n--date-order show the commits in the timestamp order: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1.\n\nWith --topo-order, they would show 8 6 5 3 7 4 2 1 (or 8 7 4 2 6 5 3 1); some older\ncommits are shown before newer ones in order to avoid showing the commits from two\nparallel development track mixed together.\n", "long": "--topo-order" }, { "name": "--reverse", "content": "Output the commits chosen to be shown (see Commit Limiting section above) in reverse\norder. Cannot be combined with --walk-reflogs.\n", "long": "--reverse" }, { "name": "Object Traversal", "content": "These options are mostly targeted for packing of Git repositories.\n" }, { "name": "--no-walk[=(sorted|unsorted)]", "content": "Only show the given commits, but do not traverse their ancestors. This has no effect if a\nrange is specified. If the argument unsorted is given, the commits are shown in the order\nthey were given on the command line. Otherwise (if sorted or no argument was given), the\ncommits are shown in reverse chronological order by commit time. Cannot be combined with\n--graph.\n" }, { "name": "--do-walk", "content": "Overrides a previous --no-walk.\n", "long": "--do-walk" }, { "name": "Commit Formatting", "content": "--pretty[=], --format=\nPretty-print the contents of the commit logs in a given format, where can be one\nof oneline, short, medium, full, fuller, reference, email, raw, format: and\ntformat:. When is none of the above, and has %placeholder in it, it acts\nas if --pretty=tformat: were given.\n\nSee the \"PRETTY FORMATS\" section for some additional details for each format. When\n= part is omitted, it defaults to medium.\n\nNote: you can specify the default pretty format in the repository configuration (see git-\nconfig(1)).\n" }, { "name": "--abbrev-commit", "content": "Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name, show a prefix that\nnames the object uniquely. \"--abbrev=\" (which also modifies diff output, if it is\ndisplayed) option can be used to specify the minimum length of the prefix.\n\nThis should make \"--pretty=oneline\" a whole lot more readable for people using 80-column\nterminals.\n", "long": "--abbrev-commit" }, { "name": "--no-abbrev-commit", "content": "Show the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name. This negates --abbrev-commit,\neither explicit or implied by other options such as \"--oneline\". It also overrides the\nlog.abbrevCommit variable.\n", "long": "--no-abbrev-commit" }, { "name": "--oneline", "content": "This is a shorthand for \"--pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit\" used together.\n\n--encoding=\nCommit objects record the character encoding used for the log message in their encoding\nheader; this option can be used to tell the command to re-code the commit log message in\nthe encoding preferred by the user. For non plumbing commands this defaults to UTF-8.\nNote that if an object claims to be encoded in X and we are outputting in X, we will\noutput the object verbatim; this means that invalid sequences in the original commit may\nbe copied to the output. Likewise, if iconv(3) fails to convert the commit, we will\nquietly output the original object verbatim.\n\n--expand-tabs=, --expand-tabs, --no-expand-tabs\nPerform a tab expansion (replace each tab with enough spaces to fill to the next display\ncolumn that is multiple of ) in the log message before showing it in the output.\n--expand-tabs is a short-hand for --expand-tabs=8, and --no-expand-tabs is a short-hand\nfor --expand-tabs=0, which disables tab expansion.\n\nBy default, tabs are expanded in pretty formats that indent the log message by 4 spaces\n(i.e. medium, which is the default, full, and fuller).\n\n--notes[=]\nShow the notes (see git-notes(1)) that annotate the commit, when showing the commit log\nmessage. This is the default for git log, git show and git whatchanged commands when\nthere is no --pretty, --format, or --oneline option given on the command line.\n\nBy default, the notes shown are from the notes refs listed in the core.notesRef and\nnotes.displayRef variables (or corresponding environment overrides). See git-config(1)\nfor more details.\n\nWith an optional argument, use the ref to find the notes to display. The ref can\nspecify the full refname when it begins with refs/notes/; when it begins with notes/,\nrefs/ and otherwise refs/notes/ is prefixed to form a full name of the ref.\n\nMultiple --notes options can be combined to control which notes are being displayed.\nExamples: \"--notes=foo\" will show only notes from \"refs/notes/foo\"; \"--notes=foo --notes\"\nwill show both notes from \"refs/notes/foo\" and from the default notes ref(s).\n", "long": "--oneline" }, { "name": "--no-notes", "content": "Do not show notes. This negates the above --notes option, by resetting the list of notes\nrefs from which notes are shown. Options are parsed in the order given on the command\nline, so e.g. \"--notes --notes=foo --no-notes --notes=bar\" will only show notes from\n\"refs/notes/bar\".\n\n--show-notes[=], --[no-]standard-notes\nThese options are deprecated. Use the above --notes/--no-notes options instead.\n", "long": "--no-notes" }, { "name": "--show-signature", "content": "Check the validity of a signed commit object by passing the signature to gpg --verify and\nshow the output.\n", "long": "--show-signature" }, { "name": "--relative-date", "content": "Synonym for --date=relative.\n\n--date=\nOnly takes effect for dates shown in human-readable format, such as when using --pretty.\nlog.date config variable sets a default value for the log command’s --date option. By\ndefault, dates are shown in the original time zone (either committer’s or author’s). If\n-local is appended to the format (e.g., iso-local), the user’s local time zone is used\ninstead.\n\n--date=relative shows dates relative to the current time, e.g. “2 hours ago”. The -local\noption has no effect for --date=relative.\n\n--date=local is an alias for --date=default-local.\n\n--date=iso (or --date=iso8601) shows timestamps in a ISO 8601-like format. The\ndifferences to the strict ISO 8601 format are:\n\n• a space instead of the T date/time delimiter\n\n• a space between time and time zone\n\n• no colon between hours and minutes of the time zone\n\n--date=iso-strict (or --date=iso8601-strict) shows timestamps in strict ISO 8601 format.\n\n--date=rfc (or --date=rfc2822) shows timestamps in RFC 2822 format, often found in email\nmessages.\n\n--date=short shows only the date, but not the time, in YYYY-MM-DD format.\n\n--date=raw shows the date as seconds since the epoch (1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC), followed\nby a space, and then the timezone as an offset from UTC (a + or - with four digits; the\nfirst two are hours, and the second two are minutes). I.e., as if the timestamp were\nformatted with strftime(\"%s %z\")). Note that the -local option does not affect the\nseconds-since-epoch value (which is always measured in UTC), but does switch the\naccompanying timezone value.\n\n--date=human shows the timezone if the timezone does not match the current time-zone, and\ndoesn’t print the whole date if that matches (ie skip printing year for dates that are\n\"this year\", but also skip the whole date itself if it’s in the last few days and we can\njust say what weekday it was). For older dates the hour and minute is also omitted.\n\n--date=unix shows the date as a Unix epoch timestamp (seconds since 1970). As with --raw,\nthis is always in UTC and therefore -local has no effect.\n\n--date=format:... feeds the format ... to your system strftime, except for %z and %Z,\nwhich are handled internally. Use --date=format:%c to show the date in your system\nlocale’s preferred format. See the strftime manual for a complete list of format\nplaceholders. When using -local, the correct syntax is --date=format-local:....\n\n--date=default is the default format, and is similar to --date=rfc2822, with a few\nexceptions:\n\n• there is no comma after the day-of-week\n\n• the time zone is omitted when the local time zone is used\n", "long": "--relative-date" }, { "name": "--parents", "content": "Print also the parents of the commit (in the form \"commit parent...\"). Also enables\nparent rewriting, see History Simplification above.\n", "long": "--parents" }, { "name": "--children", "content": "Print also the children of the commit (in the form \"commit child...\"). Also enables\nparent rewriting, see History Simplification above.\n", "long": "--children" }, { "name": "--left-right", "content": "Mark which side of a symmetric difference a commit is reachable from. Commits from the\nleft side are prefixed with < and those from the right with >. If combined with\n--boundary, those commits are prefixed with -.\n\nFor example, if you have this topology:\n\ny---b---b branch B\n/ \\ /\n/ .\n/ / \\\no---x---a---a branch A\n\nyou would get an output like this:\n\n$ git rev-list --left-right --boundary --pretty=oneline A...B\n\n>bbbbbbb... 3rd on b\n>bbbbbbb... 2nd on b\n]\nWhen --graph is not used, all history branches are flattened which can make it hard to\nsee that the two consecutive commits do not belong to a linear branch. This option puts a\nbarrier in between them in that case. If is specified, it is the string that\nwill be shown instead of the default one.\n", "long": "--graph" } ] }, "PRETTY FORMATS": { "content": "If the commit is a merge, and if the pretty-format is not oneline, email or raw, an\nadditional line is inserted before the Author: line. This line begins with \"Merge: \" and the\nhashes of ancestral commits are printed, separated by spaces. Note that the listed commits\nmay not necessarily be the list of the direct parent commits if you have limited your view of\nhistory: for example, if you are only interested in changes related to a certain directory or\nfile.\n\nThere are several built-in formats, and you can define additional formats by setting a\npretty. config option to either another format name, or a format: string, as described\nbelow (see git-config(1)). Here are the details of the built-in formats:\n\n• oneline\n\n \n\nThis is designed to be as compact as possible.\n\n• short\n\ncommit <hash>\nAuthor: <author>\n\n<title line>\n\n• medium\n\ncommit <hash>\nAuthor: <author>\nDate: <author date>\n\n<title line>\n\n<full commit message>\n\n• full\n\ncommit <hash>\nAuthor: <author>\nCommit: <committer>\n\n<title line>\n\n<full commit message>\n\n• fuller\n\ncommit <hash>\nAuthor: <author>\nAuthorDate: <author date>\nCommit: <committer>\nCommitDate: <committer date>\n\n<title line>\n\n<full commit message>\n\n• reference\n\n<abbrev hash> (<title line>, <short author date>)\n\nThis format is used to refer to another commit in a commit message and is the same as\n--pretty='format:%C(auto)%h (%s, %ad)'. By default, the date is formatted with\n--date=short unless another --date option is explicitly specified. As with any format:\nwith format placeholders, its output is not affected by other options like --decorate and\n--walk-reflogs.\n\n• email\n\nFrom <hash> <date>\nFrom: <author>\nDate: <author date>\nSubject: [PATCH] <title line>\n\n<full commit message>\n\n• mboxrd\n\nLike email, but lines in the commit message starting with \"From \" (preceded by zero or\nmore \">\") are quoted with \">\" so they aren’t confused as starting a new commit.\n\n• raw\n\nThe raw format shows the entire commit exactly as stored in the commit object. Notably,\nthe hashes are displayed in full, regardless of whether --abbrev or --no-abbrev are used,\nand parents information show the true parent commits, without taking grafts or history\nsimplification into account. Note that this format affects the way commits are displayed,\nbut not the way the diff is shown e.g. with git log --raw. To get full object names in a\nraw diff format, use --no-abbrev.\n\n• format:<string>\n\nThe format:<string> format allows you to specify which information you want to show. It\nworks a little bit like printf format, with the notable exception that you get a newline\nwith %n instead of \\n.\n\nE.g, format:\"The author of %h was %an, %ar%nThe title was >>%s<<%n\" would show something\nlike this:\n\nThe author of fe6e0ee was Junio C Hamano, 23 hours ago\nThe title was >>t4119: test autocomputing -p<n> for traditional diff input.<<\n\nThe placeholders are:\n\n• Placeholders that expand to a single literal character:\n\n%n\nnewline\n\n%%\na raw %\n\n%x00\nprint a byte from a hex code\n\n• Placeholders that affect formatting of later placeholders:\n\n%Cred\nswitch color to red\n\n%Cgreen\nswitch color to green\n\n%Cblue\nswitch color to blue\n\n%Creset\nreset color\n\n%C(...)\ncolor specification, as described under Values in the \"CONFIGURATION FILE\"\nsection of git-config(1). By default, colors are shown only when enabled for log\noutput (by color.diff, color.ui, or --color, and respecting the auto settings of\nthe former if we are going to a terminal). %C(auto,...) is accepted as a\nhistorical synonym for the default (e.g., %C(auto,red)). Specifying\n%C(always,...) will show the colors even when color is not otherwise enabled\n(though consider just using --color=always to enable color for the whole output,\nincluding this format and anything else git might color). auto alone (i.e.\n%C(auto)) will turn on auto coloring on the next placeholders until the color is\nswitched again.\n\n%m\nleft (<), right (>) or boundary (-) mark\n\n%w([<w>[,<i1>[,<i2>]]])\nswitch line wrapping, like the -w option of git-shortlog(1).\n\n%<(<N>[,trunc|ltrunc|mtrunc])\nmake the next placeholder take at least N columns, padding spaces on the right if\nnecessary. Optionally truncate at the beginning (ltrunc), the middle (mtrunc) or\nthe end (trunc) if the output is longer than N columns. Note that truncating only\nworks correctly with N >= 2.\n\n%<|(<N>)\nmake the next placeholder take at least until Nth columns, padding spaces on the\nright if necessary\n\n%>(<N>), %>|(<N>)\nsimilar to %<(<N>), %<|(<N>) respectively, but padding spaces on the left\n\n%>>(<N>), %>>|(<N>)\nsimilar to %>(<N>), %>|(<N>) respectively, except that if the next placeholder\ntakes more spaces than given and there are spaces on its left, use those spaces\n\n%><(<N>), %><|(<N>)\nsimilar to %<(<N>), %<|(<N>) respectively, but padding both sides (i.e. the text\nis centered)\n\n• Placeholders that expand to information extracted from the commit:\n\n%H\ncommit hash\n\n%h\nabbreviated commit hash\n\n%T\ntree hash\n\n%t\nabbreviated tree hash\n\n%P\nparent hashes\n\n%p\nabbreviated parent hashes\n\n%an\nauthor name\n\n%aN\nauthor name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))\n\n%ae\nauthor email\n\n%aE\nauthor email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))\n\n%al\nauthor email local-part (the part before the @ sign)\n\n%aL\nauthor local-part (see %al) respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-\nblame(1))\n\n%ad\nauthor date (format respects --date= option)\n\n%aD\nauthor date, RFC2822 style\n\n%ar\nauthor date, relative\n\n%at\nauthor date, UNIX timestamp\n\n%ai\nauthor date, ISO 8601-like format\n\n%aI\nauthor date, strict ISO 8601 format\n\n%as\nauthor date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)\n\n%ah\nauthor date, human style (like the --date=human option of git-rev-list(1))\n\n%cn\ncommitter name\n\n%cN\ncommitter name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))\n\n%ce\ncommitter email\n\n%cE\ncommitter email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))\n\n%cl\ncommitter email local-part (the part before the @ sign)\n\n%cL\ncommitter local-part (see %cl) respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-\nblame(1))\n\n%cd\ncommitter date (format respects --date= option)\n\n%cD\ncommitter date, RFC2822 style\n\n%cr\ncommitter date, relative\n\n%ct\ncommitter date, UNIX timestamp\n\n%ci\ncommitter date, ISO 8601-like format\n\n%cI\ncommitter date, strict ISO 8601 format\n\n%cs\ncommitter date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)\n\n%ch\ncommitter date, human style (like the --date=human option of git-rev-list(1))\n\n%d\nref names, like the --decorate option of git-log(1)\n\n%D\nref names without the \" (\", \")\" wrapping.\n\n%(describe[:options])\nhuman-readable name, like git-describe(1); empty string for undescribable\ncommits. The describe string may be followed by a colon and zero or more\ncomma-separated options. Descriptions can be inconsistent when tags are added or\nremoved at the same time.\n\n• match=<pattern>: Only consider tags matching the given glob(7) pattern,\nexcluding the \"refs/tags/\" prefix.\n\n• exclude=<pattern>: Do not consider tags matching the given glob(7) pattern,\nexcluding the \"refs/tags/\" prefix.\n\n%S\nref name given on the command line by which the commit was reached (like git log\n--source), only works with git log\n\n%e\nencoding\n\n%s\nsubject\n\n%f\nsanitized subject line, suitable for a filename\n\n%b\nbody\n\n%B\nraw body (unwrapped subject and body)\n\n%N\ncommit notes\n\n%GG\nraw verification message from GPG for a signed commit\n\n%G?\nshow \"G\" for a good (valid) signature, \"B\" for a bad signature, \"U\" for a good\nsignature with unknown validity, \"X\" for a good signature that has expired, \"Y\"\nfor a good signature made by an expired key, \"R\" for a good signature made by a\nrevoked key, \"E\" if the signature cannot be checked (e.g. missing key) and \"N\"\nfor no signature\n\n%GS\nshow the name of the signer for a signed commit\n\n%GK\nshow the key used to sign a signed commit\n\n%GF\nshow the fingerprint of the key used to sign a signed commit\n\n%GP\nshow the fingerprint of the primary key whose subkey was used to sign a signed\ncommit\n\n%GT\nshow the trust level for the key used to sign a signed commit\n\n%gD\nreflog selector, e.g., refs/stash@{1} or refs/stash@{2 minutes ago}; the format\nfollows the rules described for the -g option. The portion before the @ is the\nrefname as given on the command line (so git log -g refs/heads/master would yield\nrefs/heads/master@{0}).\n\n%gd\nshortened reflog selector; same as %gD, but the refname portion is shortened for\nhuman readability (so refs/heads/master becomes just master).\n\n%gn\nreflog identity name\n\n%gN\nreflog identity name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))\n\n%ge\nreflog identity email\n\n%gE\nreflog identity email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))\n\n%gs\nreflog subject\n\n%(trailers[:options])\ndisplay the trailers of the body as interpreted by git-interpret-trailers(1). The\ntrailers string may be followed by a colon and zero or more comma-separated\noptions. If any option is provided multiple times the last occurrence wins.\n\nThe boolean options accept an optional value [=<BOOL>]. The values true, false,\non, off etc. are all accepted. See the \"boolean\" sub-section in \"EXAMPLES\" in\ngit-config(1). If a boolean option is given with no value, it’s enabled.\n\n• key=<K>: only show trailers with specified key. Matching is done\ncase-insensitively and trailing colon is optional. If option is given\nmultiple times trailer lines matching any of the keys are shown. This option\nautomatically enables the only option so that non-trailer lines in the\ntrailer block are hidden. If that is not desired it can be disabled with\nonly=false. E.g., %(trailers:key=Reviewed-by) shows trailer lines with key\nReviewed-by.\n\n• only[=<BOOL>]: select whether non-trailer lines from the trailer block should\nbe included.\n\n• separator=<SEP>: specify a separator inserted between trailer lines. When\nthis option is not given each trailer line is terminated with a line feed\ncharacter. The string SEP may contain the literal formatting codes described\nabove. To use comma as separator one must use %x2C as it would otherwise be\nparsed as next option. E.g., %(trailers:key=Ticket,separator=%x2C ) shows all\ntrailer lines whose key is \"Ticket\" separated by a comma and a space.\n\n• unfold[=<BOOL>]: make it behave as if interpret-trailer’s --unfold option was\ngiven. E.g., %(trailers:only,unfold=true) unfolds and shows all trailer\nlines.\n\n• keyonly[=<BOOL>]: only show the key part of the trailer.\n\n• valueonly[=<BOOL>]: only show the value part of the trailer.\n\n• keyvalueseparator=<SEP>: specify a separator inserted between trailer\nlines. When this option is not given each trailer key-value pair is separated\nby \": \". Otherwise it shares the same semantics as separator=<SEP> above.\n\nNote\nSome placeholders may depend on other options given to the revision traversal engine. For\nexample, the %g* reflog options will insert an empty string unless we are traversing\nreflog entries (e.g., by git log -g). The %d and %D placeholders will use the \"short\"\ndecoration format if --decorate was not already provided on the command line.\n\nIf you add a + (plus sign) after % of a placeholder, a line-feed is inserted immediately\nbefore the expansion if and only if the placeholder expands to a non-empty string.\n\nIf you add a - (minus sign) after % of a placeholder, all consecutive line-feeds immediately\npreceding the expansion are deleted if and only if the placeholder expands to an empty\nstring.\n\nIf you add a ` ` (space) after % of a placeholder, a space is inserted immediately before the\nexpansion if and only if the placeholder expands to a non-empty string.\n\n• tformat:\n\nThe tformat: format works exactly like format:, except that it provides \"terminator\"\nsemantics instead of \"separator\" semantics. In other words, each commit has the message\nterminator character (usually a newline) appended, rather than a separator placed between\nentries. This means that the final entry of a single-line format will be properly\nterminated with a new line, just as the \"oneline\" format does. For example:\n\n$ git log -2 --pretty=format:%h 4da45bef \\\n| perl -pe '$ .= \" -- NO NEWLINE\\n\" unless /\\n/'\n4da45be\n7134973 -- NO NEWLINE\n\n$ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef \\\n| perl -pe '$ .= \" -- NO NEWLINE\\n\" unless /\\n/'\n4da45be\n7134973\n\nIn addition, any unrecognized string that has a % in it is interpreted as if it has\ntformat: in front of it. For example, these two are equivalent:\n\n$ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef\n$ git log -2 --pretty=%h 4da45bef\n\n", "subsections": [] }, "DIFF FORMATTING": { "content": "By default, git log does not generate any diff output. The options below can be used to show\nthe changes made by each commit.\n\nNote that unless one of --diff-merges variants (including short -m, -c, and --cc options) is\nexplicitly given, merge commits will not show a diff, even if a diff format like --patch is\nselected, nor will they match search options like -S. The exception is when --first-parent is\nin use, in which case first-parent is the default format.\n", "subsections": [ { "name": "-p, -u, --patch", "content": "Generate patch (see section on generating patches).\n", "flag": "-u", "long": "--patch" }, { "name": "-s, --no-patch", "content": "Suppress diff output. Useful for commands like git show that show the patch by default,\nor to cancel the effect of --patch.\n\n--diff-merges=(off|none|on|first-parent|1|separate|m|combined|c|dense-combined|cc),", "flag": "-s", "long": "--no-patch" }, { "name": "--no-diff-merges", "content": "Specify diff format to be used for merge commits. Default is off unless --first-parent is\nin use, in which case first-parent is the default.\n\n--diff-merges=(off|none), --no-diff-merges\nDisable output of diffs for merge commits. Useful to override implied value.\n\n--diff-merges=on, --diff-merges=m, -m\nThis option makes diff output for merge commits to be shown in the default format.\n-m will produce the output only if -p is given as well. The default format could be\nchanged using log.diffMerges configuration parameter, which default value is\nseparate.\n\n--diff-merges=first-parent, --diff-merges=1\nThis option makes merge commits show the full diff with respect to the first parent\nonly.\n\n--diff-merges=separate\nThis makes merge commits show the full diff with respect to each of the parents.\nSeparate log entry and diff is generated for each parent.\n\n--diff-merges=combined, --diff-merges=c, -c\nWith this option, diff output for a merge commit shows the differences from each of\nthe parents to the merge result simultaneously instead of showing pairwise diff\nbetween a parent and the result one at a time. Furthermore, it lists only files which\nwere modified from all parents. -c implies -p.\n\n--diff-merges=dense-combined, --diff-merges=cc, --cc\nWith this option the output produced by --diff-merges=combined is further compressed\nby omitting uninteresting hunks whose contents in the parents have only two variants\nand the merge result picks one of them without modification. --cc implies -p.\n", "long": "--no-diff-merges" }, { "name": "--combined-all-paths", "content": "This flag causes combined diffs (used for merge commits) to list the name of the file\nfrom all parents. It thus only has effect when --diff-merges=[dense-]combined is in use,\nand is likely only useful if filename changes are detected (i.e. when either rename or\ncopy detection have been requested).\n\n-U<n>, --unified=<n>\nGenerate diffs with <n> lines of context instead of the usual three. Implies --patch.\n\n--output=<file>\nOutput to a specific file instead of stdout.\n\n--output-indicator-new=<char>, --output-indicator-old=<char>,\n--output-indicator-context=<char>\nSpecify the character used to indicate new, old or context lines in the generated patch.\nNormally they are +, - and ' ' respectively.\n", "long": "--combined-all-paths" }, { "name": "--raw", "content": "For each commit, show a summary of changes using the raw diff format. See the \"RAW OUTPUT\nFORMAT\" section of git-diff(1). This is different from showing the log itself in raw\nformat, which you can achieve with --format=raw.\n", "long": "--raw" }, { "name": "--patch-with-raw", "content": "Synonym for -p --raw.\n", "long": "--patch-with-raw" }, { "name": "-t", "content": "Show the tree objects in the diff output.\n", "flag": "-t" }, { "name": "--indent-heuristic", "content": "Enable the heuristic that shifts diff hunk boundaries to make patches easier to read.\nThis is the default.\n", "long": "--indent-heuristic" }, { "name": "--no-indent-heuristic", "content": "Disable the indent heuristic.\n", "long": "--no-indent-heuristic" }, { "name": "--minimal", "content": "Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced.\n", "long": "--minimal" }, { "name": "--patience", "content": "Generate a diff using the \"patience diff\" algorithm.\n", "long": "--patience" }, { "name": "--histogram", "content": "Generate a diff using the \"histogram diff\" algorithm.\n\n--anchored=<text>\nGenerate a diff using the \"anchored diff\" algorithm.\n\nThis option may be specified more than once.\n\nIf a line exists in both the source and destination, exists only once, and starts with\nthis text, this algorithm attempts to prevent it from appearing as a deletion or addition\nin the output. It uses the \"patience diff\" algorithm internally.\n\n--diff-algorithm={patience|minimal|histogram|myers}\nChoose a diff algorithm. The variants are as follows:\n\ndefault, myers\nThe basic greedy diff algorithm. Currently, this is the default.\n\nminimal\nSpend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced.\n\npatience\nUse \"patience diff\" algorithm when generating patches.\n\nhistogram\nThis algorithm extends the patience algorithm to \"support low-occurrence common\nelements\".\n\nFor instance, if you configured the diff.algorithm variable to a non-default value and\nwant to use the default one, then you have to use --diff-algorithm=default option.\n\n--stat[=<width>[,<name-width>[,<count>]]]\nGenerate a diffstat. By default, as much space as necessary will be used for the filename\npart, and the rest for the graph part. Maximum width defaults to terminal width, or 80\ncolumns if not connected to a terminal, and can be overridden by <width>. The width of\nthe filename part can be limited by giving another width <name-width> after a comma. The\nwidth of the graph part can be limited by using --stat-graph-width=<width> (affects all\ncommands generating a stat graph) or by setting diff.statGraphWidth=<width> (does not\naffect git format-patch). By giving a third parameter <count>, you can limit the output\nto the first <count> lines, followed by ... if there are more.\n\nThese parameters can also be set individually with --stat-width=<width>,\n--stat-name-width=<name-width> and --stat-count=<count>.\n", "long": "--histogram" }, { "name": "--compact-summary", "content": "Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as file creations or\ndeletions (\"new\" or \"gone\", optionally \"+l\" if it’s a symlink) and mode changes (\"+x\" or\n\"-x\" for adding or removing executable bit respectively) in diffstat. The information is\nput between the filename part and the graph part. Implies --stat.\n", "long": "--compact-summary" }, { "name": "--numstat", "content": "Similar to --stat, but shows number of added and deleted lines in decimal notation and\npathname without abbreviation, to make it more machine friendly. For binary files,\noutputs two - instead of saying 0 0.\n", "long": "--numstat" }, { "name": "--shortstat", "content": "Output only the last line of the --stat format containing total number of modified files,\nas well as number of added and deleted lines.\n\n-X[<param1,param2,...>], --dirstat[=<param1,param2,...>]\nOutput the distribution of relative amount of changes for each sub-directory. The\nbehavior of --dirstat can be customized by passing it a comma separated list of\nparameters. The defaults are controlled by the diff.dirstat configuration variable (see\ngit-config(1)). The following parameters are available:\n\nchanges\nCompute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that have been removed from the\nsource, or added to the destination. This ignores the amount of pure code movements\nwithin a file. In other words, rearranging lines in a file is not counted as much as\nother changes. This is the default behavior when no parameter is given.\n\nlines\nCompute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular line-based diff analysis, and\nsumming the removed/added line counts. (For binary files, count 64-byte chunks\ninstead, since binary files have no natural concept of lines). This is a more\nexpensive --dirstat behavior than the changes behavior, but it does count rearranged\nlines within a file as much as other changes. The resulting output is consistent with\nwhat you get from the other --*stat options.\n\nfiles\nCompute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of files changed. Each changed\nfile counts equally in the dirstat analysis. This is the computationally cheapest\n--dirstat behavior, since it does not have to look at the file contents at all.\n\ncumulative\nCount changes in a child directory for the parent directory as well. Note that when\nusing cumulative, the sum of the percentages reported may exceed 100%. The default\n(non-cumulative) behavior can be specified with the noncumulative parameter.\n\n<limit>\nAn integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by default). Directories\ncontributing less than this percentage of the changes are not shown in the output.\n\nExample: The following will count changed files, while ignoring directories with less\nthan 10% of the total amount of changed files, and accumulating child directory counts in\nthe parent directories: --dirstat=files,10,cumulative.\n", "long": "--shortstat" }, { "name": "--cumulative", "content": "Synonym for --dirstat=cumulative\n\n--dirstat-by-file[=<param1,param2>...]\nSynonym for --dirstat=files,param1,param2...\n", "long": "--cumulative" }, { "name": "--summary", "content": "Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as creations, renames and\nmode changes.\n", "long": "--summary" }, { "name": "--patch-with-stat", "content": "Synonym for -p --stat.\n", "long": "--patch-with-stat" }, { "name": "-z", "content": "Separate the commits with NULs instead of with new newlines.\n\nAlso, when --raw or --numstat has been given, do not munge pathnames and use NULs as\noutput field terminators.\n\nWithout this option, pathnames with \"unusual\" characters are quoted as explained for the\nconfiguration variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)).\n", "flag": "-z" }, { "name": "--name-only", "content": "Show only names of changed files. The file names are often encoded in UTF-8. For more\ninformation see the discussion about encoding in the git-log(1) manual page.\n", "long": "--name-only" }, { "name": "--name-status", "content": "Show only names and status of changed files. See the description of the --diff-filter\noption on what the status letters mean. Just like --name-only the file names are often\nencoded in UTF-8.\n\n--submodule[=<format>]\nSpecify how differences in submodules are shown. When specifying --submodule=short the\nshort format is used. This format just shows the names of the commits at the beginning\nand end of the range. When --submodule or --submodule=log is specified, the log format is\nused. This format lists the commits in the range like git-submodule(1) summary does. When\n--submodule=diff is specified, the diff format is used. This format shows an inline diff\nof the changes in the submodule contents between the commit range. Defaults to\ndiff.submodule or the short format if the config option is unset.\n\n--color[=<when>]\nShow colored diff. --color (i.e. without =<when>) is the same as --color=always. <when>\ncan be one of always, never, or auto.\n", "long": "--name-status" }, { "name": "--no-color", "content": "Turn off colored diff. It is the same as --color=never.\n\n--color-moved[=<mode>]\nMoved lines of code are colored differently. The <mode> defaults to no if the option is\nnot given and to zebra if the option with no mode is given. The mode must be one of:\n\nno\nMoved lines are not highlighted.\n\ndefault\nIs a synonym for zebra. This may change to a more sensible mode in the future.\n\nplain\nAny line that is added in one location and was removed in another location will be\ncolored with color.diff.newMoved. Similarly color.diff.oldMoved will be used for\nremoved lines that are added somewhere else in the diff. This mode picks up any moved\nline, but it is not very useful in a review to determine if a block of code was moved\nwithout permutation.\n\nblocks\nBlocks of moved text of at least 20 alphanumeric characters are detected greedily.\nThe detected blocks are painted using either the color.diff.{old,new}Moved color.\nAdjacent blocks cannot be told apart.\n\nzebra\nBlocks of moved text are detected as in blocks mode. The blocks are painted using\neither the color.diff.{old,new}Moved color or color.diff.{old,new}MovedAlternative.\nThe change between the two colors indicates that a new block was detected.\n\ndimmed-zebra\nSimilar to zebra, but additional dimming of uninteresting parts of moved code is\nperformed. The bordering lines of two adjacent blocks are considered interesting, the\nrest is uninteresting. dimmedzebra is a deprecated synonym.\n", "long": "--no-color" }, { "name": "--no-color-moved", "content": "Turn off move detection. This can be used to override configuration settings. It is the\nsame as --color-moved=no.\n\n--color-moved-ws=<modes>\nThis configures how whitespace is ignored when performing the move detection for\n--color-moved. These modes can be given as a comma separated list:\n\nno\nDo not ignore whitespace when performing move detection.\n\nignore-space-at-eol\nIgnore changes in whitespace at EOL.\n\nignore-space-change\nIgnore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace at line end, and\nconsiders all other sequences of one or more whitespace characters to be equivalent.\n\nignore-all-space\nIgnore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences even if one line has\nwhitespace where the other line has none.\n\nallow-indentation-change\nInitially ignore any whitespace in the move detection, then group the moved code\nblocks only into a block if the change in whitespace is the same per line. This is\nincompatible with the other modes.\n", "long": "--no-color-moved" }, { "name": "--no-color-moved-ws", "content": "Do not ignore whitespace when performing move detection. This can be used to override\nconfiguration settings. It is the same as --color-moved-ws=no.\n\n--word-diff[=<mode>]\nShow a word diff, using the <mode> to delimit changed words. By default, words are\ndelimited by whitespace; see --word-diff-regex below. The <mode> defaults to plain, and\nmust be one of:\n\ncolor\nHighlight changed words using only colors. Implies --color.\n\nplain\nShow words as [-removed-] and {+added+}. Makes no attempts to escape the delimiters\nif they appear in the input, so the output may be ambiguous.\n\nporcelain\nUse a special line-based format intended for script consumption.\nAdded/removed/unchanged runs are printed in the usual unified diff format, starting\nwith a +/-/` ` character at the beginning of the line and extending to the end of the\nline. Newlines in the input are represented by a tilde ~ on a line of its own.\n\nnone\nDisable word diff again.\n\nNote that despite the name of the first mode, color is used to highlight the changed\nparts in all modes if enabled.\n\n--word-diff-regex=<regex>\nUse <regex> to decide what a word is, instead of considering runs of non-whitespace to be\na word. Also implies --word-diff unless it was already enabled.\n\nEvery non-overlapping match of the <regex> is considered a word. Anything between these\nmatches is considered whitespace and ignored(!) for the purposes of finding differences.\nYou may want to append |[^[:space:]] to your regular expression to make sure that it\nmatches all non-whitespace characters. A match that contains a newline is silently\ntruncated(!) at the newline.\n\nFor example, --word-diff-regex=. will treat each character as a word and,\ncorrespondingly, show differences character by character.\n\nThe regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration option, see gitattributes(5)\nor git-config(1). Giving it explicitly overrides any diff driver or configuration\nsetting. Diff drivers override configuration settings.\n\n--color-words[=<regex>]\nEquivalent to --word-diff=color plus (if a regex was specified)\n--word-diff-regex=<regex>.\n", "long": "--no-color-moved-ws" }, { "name": "--no-renames", "content": "Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration file gives the default to do so.\n\n--[no-]rename-empty\nWhether to use empty blobs as rename source.\n", "long": "--no-renames" }, { "name": "--check", "content": "Warn if changes introduce conflict markers or whitespace errors. What are considered\nwhitespace errors is controlled by core.whitespace configuration. By default, trailing\nwhitespaces (including lines that consist solely of whitespaces) and a space character\nthat is immediately followed by a tab character inside the initial indent of the line are\nconsidered whitespace errors. Exits with non-zero status if problems are found. Not\ncompatible with --exit-code.\n\n--ws-error-highlight=<kind>\nHighlight whitespace errors in the context, old or new lines of the diff. Multiple values\nare separated by comma, none resets previous values, default reset the list to new and\nall is a shorthand for old,new,context. When this option is not given, and the\nconfiguration variable diff.wsErrorHighlight is not set, only whitespace errors in new\nlines are highlighted. The whitespace errors are colored with color.diff.whitespace.\n", "long": "--check" }, { "name": "--full-index", "content": "Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full pre- and post-image blob object\nnames on the \"index\" line when generating patch format output.\n", "long": "--full-index" }, { "name": "--binary", "content": "In addition to --full-index, output a binary diff that can be applied with git-apply.\nImplies --patch.\n\n--abbrev[=<n>]\nInstead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name in diff-raw format output and\ndiff-tree header lines, show the shortest prefix that is at least <n> hexdigits long that\nuniquely refers the object. In diff-patch output format, --full-index takes higher\nprecedence, i.e. if --full-index is specified, full blob names will be shown regardless\nof --abbrev. Non default number of digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.\n\n-B[<n>][/<m>], --break-rewrites[=[<n>][/<m>]]\nBreak complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create. This serves two purposes:\n\nIt affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite of a file not as a series of\ndeletion and insertion mixed together with a very few lines that happen to match\ntextually as the context, but as a single deletion of everything old followed by a single\ninsertion of everything new, and the number m controls this aspect of the -B option\n(defaults to 60%). -B/70% specifies that less than 30% of the original should remain in\nthe result for Git to consider it a total rewrite (i.e. otherwise the resulting patch\nwill be a series of deletion and insertion mixed together with context lines).\n\nWhen used with -M, a totally-rewritten file is also considered as the source of a rename\n(usually -M only considers a file that disappeared as the source of a rename), and the\nnumber n controls this aspect of the -B option (defaults to 50%). -B20% specifies that a\nchange with addition and deletion compared to 20% or more of the file’s size are eligible\nfor being picked up as a possible source of a rename to another file.\n\n-M[<n>], --find-renames[=<n>]\nIf generating diffs, detect and report renames for each commit. For following files\nacross renames while traversing history, see --follow. If n is specified, it is a\nthreshold on the similarity index (i.e. amount of addition/deletions compared to the\nfile’s size). For example, -M90% means Git should consider a delete/add pair to be a\nrename if more than 90% of the file hasn’t changed. Without a % sign, the number is to be\nread as a fraction, with a decimal point before it. I.e., -M5 becomes 0.5, and is thus\nthe same as -M50%. Similarly, -M05 is the same as -M5%. To limit detection to exact\nrenames, use -M100%. The default similarity index is 50%.\n\n-C[<n>], --find-copies[=<n>]\nDetect copies as well as renames. See also --find-copies-harder. If n is specified, it\nhas the same meaning as for -M<n>.\n", "long": "--binary" }, { "name": "--find-copies-harder", "content": "For performance reasons, by default, -C option finds copies only if the original file of\nthe copy was modified in the same changeset. This flag makes the command inspect\nunmodified files as candidates for the source of copy. This is a very expensive operation\nfor large projects, so use it with caution. Giving more than one -C option has the same\neffect.\n", "long": "--find-copies-harder" }, { "name": "-D, --irreversible-delete", "content": "Omit the preimage for deletes, i.e. print only the header but not the diff between the\npreimage and /dev/null. The resulting patch is not meant to be applied with patch or git\napply; this is solely for people who want to just concentrate on reviewing the text after\nthe change. In addition, the output obviously lacks enough information to apply such a\npatch in reverse, even manually, hence the name of the option.\n\nWhen used together with -B, omit also the preimage in the deletion part of a\ndelete/create pair.\n", "flag": "-D", "long": "--irreversible-delete" }, { "name": "-l<num>", "content": "The -M and -C options involve some preliminary steps that can detect subsets of\nrenames/copies cheaply, followed by an exhaustive fallback portion that compares all\nremaining unpaired destinations to all relevant sources. (For renames, only remaining\nunpaired sources are relevant; for copies, all original sources are relevant.) For N\nsources and destinations, this exhaustive check is O(N^2). This option prevents the\nexhaustive portion of rename/copy detection from running if the number of\nsource/destination files involved exceeds the specified number. Defaults to\ndiff.renameLimit. Note that a value of 0 is treated as unlimited.\n\n--diff-filter=[(A|C|D|M|R|T|U|X|B)...[*]]\nSelect only files that are Added (A), Copied (C), Deleted (D), Modified (M), Renamed (R),\nhave their type (i.e. regular file, symlink, submodule, ...) changed (T), are Unmerged\n(U), are Unknown (X), or have had their pairing Broken (B). Any combination of the filter\ncharacters (including none) can be used. When * (All-or-none) is added to the\ncombination, all paths are selected if there is any file that matches other criteria in\nthe comparison; if there is no file that matches other criteria, nothing is selected.\n\nAlso, these upper-case letters can be downcased to exclude. E.g. --diff-filter=ad\nexcludes added and deleted paths.\n\nNote that not all diffs can feature all types. For instance, diffs from the index to the\nworking tree can never have Added entries (because the set of paths included in the diff\nis limited by what is in the index). Similarly, copied and renamed entries cannot appear\nif detection for those types is disabled.\n" }, { "name": "-S<string>", "content": "Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of the specified string (i.e.\naddition/deletion) in a file. Intended for the scripter’s use.\n\nIt is useful when you’re looking for an exact block of code (like a struct), and want to\nknow the history of that block since it first came into being: use the feature\niteratively to feed the interesting block in the preimage back into -S, and keep going\nuntil you get the very first version of the block.\n\nBinary files are searched as well.\n" }, { "name": "-G<regex>", "content": "Look for differences whose patch text contains added/removed lines that match <regex>.\n\nTo illustrate the difference between -S<regex> --pickaxe-regex and -G<regex>, consider a\ncommit with the following diff in the same file:\n\n+ return frotz(nitfol, two->ptr, 1, 0);\n...\n- hit = frotz(nitfol, mf2.ptr, 1, 0);\n\nWhile git log -G\"frotz\\(nitfol\" will show this commit, git log -S\"frotz\\(nitfol\"\n--pickaxe-regex will not (because the number of occurrences of that string did not\nchange).\n\nUnless --text is supplied patches of binary files without a textconv filter will be\nignored.\n\nSee the pickaxe entry in gitdiffcore(7) for more information.\n\n--find-object=<object-id>\nLook for differences that change the number of occurrences of the specified object.\nSimilar to -S, just the argument is different in that it doesn’t search for a specific\nstring but for a specific object id.\n\nThe object can be a blob or a submodule commit. It implies the -t option in git-log to\nalso find trees.\n" }, { "name": "--pickaxe-all", "content": "When -S or -G finds a change, show all the changes in that changeset, not just the files\nthat contain the change in <string>.\n", "long": "--pickaxe-all" }, { "name": "--pickaxe-regex", "content": "Treat the <string> given to -S as an extended POSIX regular expression to match.\n", "long": "--pickaxe-regex" }, { "name": "-O<orderfile>", "content": "Control the order in which files appear in the output. This overrides the diff.orderFile\nconfiguration variable (see git-config(1)). To cancel diff.orderFile, use -O/dev/null.\n\nThe output order is determined by the order of glob patterns in <orderfile>. All files\nwith pathnames that match the first pattern are output first, all files with pathnames\nthat match the second pattern (but not the first) are output next, and so on. All files\nwith pathnames that do not match any pattern are output last, as if there was an implicit\nmatch-all pattern at the end of the file. If multiple pathnames have the same rank (they\nmatch the same pattern but no earlier patterns), their output order relative to each\nother is the normal order.\n\n<orderfile> is parsed as follows:\n\n• Blank lines are ignored, so they can be used as separators for readability.\n\n• Lines starting with a hash (\"#\") are ignored, so they can be used for comments. Add a\nbackslash (\"\\\") to the beginning of the pattern if it starts with a hash.\n\n• Each other line contains a single pattern.\n\nPatterns have the same syntax and semantics as patterns used for fnmatch(3) without the\nFNMPATHNAME flag, except a pathname also matches a pattern if removing any number of the\nfinal pathname components matches the pattern. For example, the pattern \"foo*bar\" matches\n\"fooasdfbar\" and \"foo/bar/baz/asdf\" but not \"foobarx\".\n\n--skip-to=<file>, --rotate-to=<file>\nDiscard the files before the named <file> from the output (i.e. skip to), or move them\nto the end of the output (i.e. rotate to). These were invented primarily for use of the\ngit difftool command, and may not be very useful otherwise.\n" }, { "name": "-R", "content": "Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or on-disk file to tree contents.\n\n--relative[=<path>], --no-relative\nWhen run from a subdirectory of the project, it can be told to exclude changes outside\nthe directory and show pathnames relative to it with this option. When you are not in a\nsubdirectory (e.g. in a bare repository), you can name which subdirectory to make the\noutput relative to by giving a <path> as an argument. --no-relative can be used to\ncountermand both diff.relative config option and previous --relative.\n", "flag": "-R" }, { "name": "-a, --text", "content": "Treat all files as text.\n", "flag": "-a", "long": "--text" }, { "name": "--ignore-cr-at-eol", "content": "Ignore carriage-return at the end of line when doing a comparison.\n", "long": "--ignore-cr-at-eol" }, { "name": "--ignore-space-at-eol", "content": "Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.\n", "long": "--ignore-space-at-eol" }, { "name": "-b, --ignore-space-change", "content": "Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace at line end, and\nconsiders all other sequences of one or more whitespace characters to be equivalent.\n", "flag": "-b", "long": "--ignore-space-change" }, { "name": "-w, --ignore-all-space", "content": "Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences even if one line has\nwhitespace where the other line has none.\n", "flag": "-w", "long": "--ignore-all-space" }, { "name": "--ignore-blank-lines", "content": "Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.\n\n-I<regex>, --ignore-matching-lines=<regex>\nIgnore changes whose all lines match <regex>. This option may be specified more than\nonce.\n\n--inter-hunk-context=<lines>\nShow the context between diff hunks, up to the specified number of lines, thereby fusing\nhunks that are close to each other. Defaults to diff.interHunkContext or 0 if the config\noption is unset.\n", "long": "--ignore-blank-lines" }, { "name": "-W, --function-context", "content": "Show whole function as context lines for each change. The function names are determined\nin the same way as git diff works out patch hunk headers (see Defining a custom\nhunk-header in gitattributes(5)).\n", "flag": "-W", "long": "--function-context" }, { "name": "--ext-diff", "content": "Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set an external diff driver with\ngitattributes(5), you need to use this option with git-log(1) and friends.\n", "long": "--ext-diff" }, { "name": "--no-ext-diff", "content": "Disallow external diff drivers.\n", "long": "--no-ext-diff" }, { "name": "--textconv, --no-textconv", "content": "Allow (or disallow) external text conversion filters to be run when comparing binary\nfiles. See gitattributes(5) for details. Because textconv filters are typically a one-way\nconversion, the resulting diff is suitable for human consumption, but cannot be applied.\nFor this reason, textconv filters are enabled by default only for git-diff(1) and git-\nlog(1), but not for git-format-patch(1) or diff plumbing commands.\n\n--ignore-submodules[=<when>]\nIgnore changes to submodules in the diff generation. <when> can be either \"none\",\n\"untracked\", \"dirty\" or \"all\", which is the default. Using \"none\" will consider the\nsubmodule modified when it either contains untracked or modified files or its HEAD\ndiffers from the commit recorded in the superproject and can be used to override any\nsettings of the ignore option in git-config(1) or gitmodules(5). When \"untracked\" is used\nsubmodules are not considered dirty when they only contain untracked content (but they\nare still scanned for modified content). Using \"dirty\" ignores all changes to the work\ntree of submodules, only changes to the commits stored in the superproject are shown\n(this was the behavior until 1.7.0). Using \"all\" hides all changes to submodules.\n\n--src-prefix=<prefix>\nShow the given source prefix instead of \"a/\".\n\n--dst-prefix=<prefix>\nShow the given destination prefix instead of \"b/\".\n", "long": "--no-textconv" }, { "name": "--no-prefix", "content": "Do not show any source or destination prefix.\n\n--line-prefix=<prefix>\nPrepend an additional prefix to every line of output.\n", "long": "--no-prefix" }, { "name": "--ita-invisible-in-index", "content": "By default entries added by \"git add -N\" appear as an existing empty file in \"git diff\"\nand a new file in \"git diff --cached\". This option makes the entry appear as a new file\nin \"git diff\" and non-existent in \"git diff --cached\". This option could be reverted with\n--ita-visible-in-index. Both options are experimental and could be removed in future.\n\nFor more detailed explanation on these common options, see also gitdiffcore(7).\n", "long": "--ita-invisible-in-index" } ] }, "GENERATING PATCH TEXT WITH -P": { "content": "Running git-diff(1), git-log(1), git-show(1), git-diff-index(1), git-diff-tree(1), or git-\ndiff-files(1) with the -p option produces patch text. You can customize the creation of patch\ntext via the GITEXTERNALDIFF and the GITDIFFOPTS environment variables (see git(1)), and\nthe diff attribute (see gitattributes(5)).\n\nWhat the -p option produces is slightly different from the traditional diff format:\n\n1. It is preceded with a \"git diff\" header that looks like this:\n\ndiff --git a/file1 b/file2\n\nThe a/ and b/ filenames are the same unless rename/copy is involved. Especially, even for\na creation or a deletion, /dev/null is not used in place of the a/ or b/ filenames.\n\nWhen rename/copy is involved, file1 and file2 show the name of the source file of the\nrename/copy and the name of the file that rename/copy produces, respectively.\n\n2. It is followed by one or more extended header lines:\n\nold mode <mode>\nnew mode <mode>\ndeleted file mode <mode>\nnew file mode <mode>\ncopy from <path>\ncopy to <path>\nrename from <path>\nrename to <path>\nsimilarity index <number>\ndissimilarity index <number>\nindex <hash>..<hash> <mode>\n\nFile modes are printed as 6-digit octal numbers including the file type and file\npermission bits.\n\nPath names in extended headers do not include the a/ and b/ prefixes.\n\nThe similarity index is the percentage of unchanged lines, and the dissimilarity index is\nthe percentage of changed lines. It is a rounded down integer, followed by a percent\nsign. The similarity index value of 100% is thus reserved for two equal files, while 100%\ndissimilarity means that no line from the old file made it into the new one.\n\nThe index line includes the blob object names before and after the change. The <mode> is\nincluded if the file mode does not change; otherwise, separate lines indicate the old and\nthe new mode.\n\n3. Pathnames with \"unusual\" characters are quoted as explained for the configuration\nvariable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)).\n\n4. All the file1 files in the output refer to files before the commit, and all the file2\nfiles refer to files after the commit. It is incorrect to apply each change to each file\nsequentially. For example, this patch will swap a and b:\n\ndiff --git a/a b/b\nrename from a\nrename to b\ndiff --git a/b b/a\nrename from b\nrename to a\n\n5. Hunk headers mention the name of the function to which the hunk applies. See \"Defining a\ncustom hunk-header\" in gitattributes(5) for details of how to tailor to this to specific\nlanguages.\n", "subsections": [] }, "COMBINED DIFF FORMAT": { "content": "Any diff-generating command can take the -c or --cc option to produce a combined diff when\nshowing a merge. This is the default format when showing merges with git-diff(1) or git-\nshow(1). Note also that you can give suitable --diff-merges option to any of these commands\nto force generation of diffs in specific format.\n\nA \"combined diff\" format looks like this:\n\ndiff --combined describe.c\nindex fabadb8,cc95eb0..4866510\n--- a/describe.c\n+++ b/describe.c\n@@@ -98,20 -98,12 +98,20 @@@\nreturn (adate > bdate) ? -1 : (adate == bdate) ? 0 : 1;\n}\n\n- static void describe(char *arg)\n-static void describe(struct commit *cmit, int lastone)\n++static void describe(char *arg, int lastone)\n{\n+ unsigned char sha1[20];\n+ struct commit *cmit;\nstruct commitlist *list;\nstatic int initialized = 0;\nstruct commitname *n;\n\n+ if (getsha1(arg, sha1) < 0)\n+ usage(describeusage);\n+ cmit = lookupcommitreference(sha1);\n+ if (!cmit)\n+ usage(describeusage);\n+\nif (!initialized) {\ninitialized = 1;\nforeachref(getname);\n\n\n\n1. It is preceded with a \"git diff\" header, that looks like this (when the -c option is\nused):\n\ndiff --combined file\n\nor like this (when the --cc option is used):\n\ndiff --cc file\n\n2. It is followed by one or more extended header lines (this example shows a merge with two\nparents):\n\nindex <hash>,<hash>..<hash>\nmode <mode>,<mode>..<mode>\nnew file mode <mode>\ndeleted file mode <mode>,<mode>\n\nThe mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode> line appears only if at least one of the <mode> is\ndifferent from the rest. Extended headers with information about detected contents\nmovement (renames and copying detection) are designed to work with diff of two <tree-ish>\nand are not used by combined diff format.\n\n3. It is followed by two-line from-file/to-file header\n\n--- a/file\n+++ b/file\n\nSimilar to two-line header for traditional unified diff format, /dev/null is used to\nsignal created or deleted files.\n\nHowever, if the --combined-all-paths option is provided, instead of a two-line\nfrom-file/to-file you get a N+1 line from-file/to-file header, where N is the number of\nparents in the merge commit\n\n--- a/file\n--- a/file\n--- a/file\n+++ b/file\n\nThis extended format can be useful if rename or copy detection is active, to allow you to\nsee the original name of the file in different parents.\n\n4. Chunk header format is modified to prevent people from accidentally feeding it to patch\n-p1. Combined diff format was created for review of merge commit changes, and was not\nmeant to be applied. The change is similar to the change in the extended index header:\n\n@@@ <from-file-range> <from-file-range> <to-file-range> @@@\n\nThere are (number of parents + 1) @ characters in the chunk header for combined diff\nformat.\n\nUnlike the traditional unified diff format, which shows two files A and B with a single\ncolumn that has - (minus — appears in A but removed in B), + (plus — missing in A but added\nto B), or \" \" (space — unchanged) prefix, this format compares two or more files file1,\nfile2,... with one file X, and shows how X differs from each of fileN. One column for each of\nfileN is prepended to the output line to note how X’s line is different from it.\n\nA - character in the column N means that the line appears in fileN but it does not appear in\nthe result. A + character in the column N means that the line appears in the result, and\nfileN does not have that line (in other words, the line was added, from the point of view of\nthat parent).\n\nIn the above example output, the function signature was changed from both files (hence two -\nremovals from both file1 and file2, plus ++ to mean one line that was added does not appear\nin either file1 or file2). Also eight other lines are the same from file1 but do not appear\nin file2 (hence prefixed with +).\n\nWhen shown by git diff-tree -c, it compares the parents of a merge commit with the merge\nresult (i.e. file1..fileN are the parents). When shown by git diff-files -c, it compares the\ntwo unresolved merge parents with the working tree file (i.e. file1 is stage 2 aka \"our\nversion\", file2 is stage 3 aka \"their version\").\n", "subsections": [] }, "EXAMPLES": { "content": "", "subsections": [ { "name": "git log --no-merges", "content": "Show the whole commit history, but skip any merges\n" }, { "name": "git log v2.6.12.. include/scsi drivers/scsi", "content": "Show all commits since version v2.6.12 that changed any file in the include/scsi or\ndrivers/scsi subdirectories\n" }, { "name": "git log --since=\"2 weeks ago\" -- gitk", "content": "Show the changes during the last two weeks to the file gitk. The -- is necessary to avoid\nconfusion with the branch named gitk\n" }, { "name": "git log --name-status release..test", "content": "Show the commits that are in the \"test\" branch but not yet in the \"release\" branch, along\nwith the list of paths each commit modifies.\n" }, { "name": "git log --follow builtin/rev-list.c", "content": "Shows the commits that changed builtin/rev-list.c, including those commits that occurred\nbefore the file was given its present name.\n" }, { "name": "git log --branches --not --remotes=origin", "content": "Shows all commits that are in any of local branches but not in any of remote-tracking\nbranches for origin (what you have that origin doesn’t).\n\ngit log master --not --remotes=*/master\nShows all commits that are in local master but not in any remote repository master\nbranches.\n" }, { "name": "git log -p -m --first-parent", "content": "Shows the history including change diffs, but only from the “main branch” perspective,\nskipping commits that come from merged branches, and showing full diffs of changes\nintroduced by the merges. This makes sense only when following a strict policy of merging\nall topic branches when staying on a single integration branch.\n" }, { "name": "git log -L '/int main/',/^}/:main.c", "content": "Shows how the function main() in the file main.c evolved over time.\n" }, { "name": "git log -3", "content": "Limits the number of commits to show to 3.\n" } ] }, "DISCUSSION": { "content": "Git is to some extent character encoding agnostic.\n\n• The contents of the blob objects are uninterpreted sequences of bytes. There is no\nencoding translation at the core level.\n\n• Path names are encoded in UTF-8 normalization form C. This applies to tree objects, the\nindex file, ref names, as well as path names in command line arguments, environment\nvariables and config files (.git/config (see git-config(1)), gitignore(5),\ngitattributes(5) and gitmodules(5)).\n\nNote that Git at the core level treats path names simply as sequences of non-NUL bytes,\nthere are no path name encoding conversions (except on Mac and Windows). Therefore, using\nnon-ASCII path names will mostly work even on platforms and file systems that use legacy\nextended ASCII encodings. However, repositories created on such systems will not work\nproperly on UTF-8-based systems (e.g. Linux, Mac, Windows) and vice versa. Additionally,\nmany Git-based tools simply assume path names to be UTF-8 and will fail to display other\nencodings correctly.\n\n• Commit log messages are typically encoded in UTF-8, but other extended ASCII encodings\nare also supported. This includes ISO-8859-x, CP125x and many others, but not UTF-16/32,\nEBCDIC and CJK multi-byte encodings (GBK, Shift-JIS, Big5, EUC-x, CP9xx etc.).\n\nAlthough we encourage that the commit log messages are encoded in UTF-8, both the core and\nGit Porcelain are designed not to force UTF-8 on projects. If all participants of a\nparticular project find it more convenient to use legacy encodings, Git does not forbid it.\nHowever, there are a few things to keep in mind.\n\n1. git commit and git commit-tree issues a warning if the commit log message given to it\ndoes not look like a valid UTF-8 string, unless you explicitly say your project uses a\nlegacy encoding. The way to say this is to have i18n.commitEncoding in .git/config file,\nlike this:\n\n[i18n]\ncommitEncoding = ISO-8859-1\n\nCommit objects created with the above setting record the value of i18n.commitEncoding in\nits encoding header. This is to help other people who look at them later. Lack of this\nheader implies that the commit log message is encoded in UTF-8.\n\n2. git log, git show, git blame and friends look at the encoding header of a commit object,\nand try to re-code the log message into UTF-8 unless otherwise specified. You can specify\nthe desired output encoding with i18n.logOutputEncoding in .git/config file, like this:\n\n[i18n]\nlogOutputEncoding = ISO-8859-1\n\nIf you do not have this configuration variable, the value of i18n.commitEncoding is used\ninstead.\n\nNote that we deliberately chose not to re-code the commit log message when a commit is made\nto force UTF-8 at the commit object level, because re-coding to UTF-8 is not necessarily a\nreversible operation.\n", "subsections": [] }, "CONFIGURATION": { "content": "See git-config(1) for core variables and git-diff(1) for settings related to diff generation.\n\nformat.pretty\nDefault for the --format option. (See Pretty Formats above.) Defaults to medium.\n\ni18n.logOutputEncoding\nEncoding to use when displaying logs. (See Discussion above.) Defaults to the value of\ni18n.commitEncoding if set, and UTF-8 otherwise.\n\nlog.date\nDefault format for human-readable dates. (Compare the --date option.) Defaults to\n\"default\", which means to write dates like Sat May 8 19:35:34 2010 -0500.\n\nIf the format is set to \"auto:foo\" and the pager is in use, format \"foo\" will be the used\nfor the date format. Otherwise \"default\" will be used.\n\nlog.follow\nIf true, git log will act as if the --follow option was used when a single <path> is\ngiven. This has the same limitations as --follow, i.e. it cannot be used to follow\nmultiple files and does not work well on non-linear history.\n\nlog.showRoot\nIf false, git log and related commands will not treat the initial commit as a big\ncreation event. Any root commits in git log -p output would be shown without a diff\nattached. The default is true.\n\nlog.showSignature\nIf true, git log and related commands will act as if the --show-signature option was\npassed to them.\n\nmailmap.*\nSee git-shortlog(1).\n\nnotes.displayRef\nWhich refs, in addition to the default set by core.notesRef or GITNOTESREF, to read\nnotes from when showing commit messages with the log family of commands. See git-\nnotes(1).\n\nMay be an unabbreviated ref name or a glob and may be specified multiple times. A warning\nwill be issued for refs that do not exist, but a glob that does not match any refs is\nsilently ignored.\n\nThis setting can be disabled by the --no-notes option, overridden by the\nGITNOTESDISPLAYREF environment variable, and overridden by the --notes=<ref> option.\n", "subsections": [] }, "GIT": { "content": "Part of the git(1) suite\n\n\n\nGit 2.34.1 02/26/2026 GIT-LOG(1)", "subsections": [] } }, "summary": "git-log - Show commit logs", "flags": [ { "flag": "", "long": "--follow", "arg": null, "description": "Continue listing the history of a file beyond renames (works only for a single file)." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--no-decorate", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--source", "arg": null, "description": "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)." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--full-diff", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--log-size", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--all-match", "arg": null, "description": "Limit the commits output to ones that match all given --grep, instead of ones that match at least one." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--invert-grep", "arg": null, "description": "Limit the commits output to ones with log message that do not match the pattern specified with --grep=<pattern>." }, { "flag": "-i", "long": "--regexp-ignore-case", "arg": null, "description": "Match the regular expression limiting patterns without regard to letter case." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--basic-regexp", "arg": null, "description": "Consider the limiting patterns to be basic regular expressions; this is the default." }, { "flag": "-E", "long": "--extended-regexp", "arg": null, "description": "Consider the limiting patterns to be extended regular expressions instead of the default basic regular expressions." }, { "flag": "-F", "long": "--fixed-strings", "arg": null, "description": "Consider the limiting patterns to be fixed strings (don’t interpret pattern as a regular expression)." }, { "flag": "-P", "long": "--perl-regexp", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--remove-empty", "arg": null, "description": "Stop when a given path disappears from the tree." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--merges", "arg": null, "description": "Print only merge commits. This is exactly the same as --min-parents=2." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--no-merges", "arg": null, "description": "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)." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--first-parent", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--not", "arg": null, "description": "Reverses the meaning of the ^ prefix (or lack thereof) for all following revision specifiers, up to the next --not." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--all", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--reflog", "arg": null, "description": "Pretend as if all objects mentioned by reflogs are listed on the command line as <commit>." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--alternate-refs", "arg": null, "description": "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)." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--single-worktree", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--ignore-missing", "arg": null, "description": "Upon seeing an invalid object name in the input, pretend as if the bad input was not given." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--bisect", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--stdin", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--cherry-mark", "arg": null, "description": "Like --cherry-pick (see below) but mark equivalent commits with = rather than omitting them, and inequivalent ones with +." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--cherry-pick", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--right-only", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--cherry", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "-g", "long": "--walk-reflogs", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--merge", "arg": null, "description": "After a failed merge, show refs that touch files having a conflict and don’t exist on all heads to merge." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--boundary", "arg": null, "description": "Output excluded boundary commits. Boundary commits are prefixed with -." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--simplify-by-decoration", "arg": null, "description": "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)" }, { "flag": "", "long": "--show-pulls", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--full-history", "arg": null, "description": "Same as the default mode, but does not prune some history." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--dense", "arg": null, "description": "Only the selected commits are shown, plus some to have a meaningful history." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--sparse", "arg": null, "description": "All commits in the simplified history are shown." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--simplify-merges", "arg": null, "description": "Additional option to --full-history to remove some needless merges from the resulting history, as there are no selected commits contributing to this merge." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--ancestry-path", "arg": null, "description": "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:" }, { "flag": "", "long": "--dense", "arg": null, "description": "Commits that are walked are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--sparse", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--simplify-merges", "arg": null, "description": "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:" }, { "flag": "", "long": "--ancestry-path", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--show-pulls", "arg": null, "description": "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)." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--date-order", "arg": null, "description": "Show no parents before all of its children are shown, but otherwise show commits in the commit timestamp order." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--author-date-order", "arg": null, "description": "Show no parents before all of its children are shown, but otherwise show commits in the author timestamp order." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--topo-order", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--reverse", "arg": null, "description": "Output the commits chosen to be shown (see Commit Limiting section above) in reverse order. Cannot be combined with --walk-reflogs." }, { "flag": "", "long": null, "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--do-walk", "arg": null, "description": "Overrides a previous --no-walk." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--abbrev-commit", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--no-abbrev-commit", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--oneline", "arg": null, "description": "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)." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--no-notes", "arg": null, "description": "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." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--show-signature", "arg": null, "description": "Check the validity of a signed commit object by passing the signature to gpg --verify and show the output." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--relative-date", "arg": null, "description": "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" }, { "flag": "", "long": "--parents", "arg": null, "description": "Print also the parents of the commit (in the form \"commit parent...\"). Also enables parent rewriting, see History Simplification above." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--children", "arg": null, "description": "Print also the children of the commit (in the form \"commit child...\"). Also enables parent rewriting, see History Simplification above." }, { "flag": "", "long": "--left-right", "arg": null, "description": "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" }, { "flag": "", "long": "--graph", "arg": null, "description": "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." } ], "examples": [ "Show the whole commit history, but skip any merges", "Show all commits since version v2.6.12 that changed any file in the include/scsi or", "drivers/scsi subdirectories", "Show the changes during the last two weeks to the file gitk. The -- is necessary to avoid", "confusion with the branch named gitk", "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.", "Shows the commits that changed builtin/rev-list.c, including those commits that occurred", "before the file was given its present name.", "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.", "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.", "Shows how the function main() in the file main.c evolved over time.", "Limits the number of commits to show to 3." ], "see_also": [] }