git-log

GIT-LOG(1) Git Manual GIT-LOG(1)

NAME
git-log - Show commit logs

SYNOPSIS
git log [<options>] [<revision range>] [[--] <path>...]

DESCRIPTION
Shows the commit logs.

The command takes options applicable to the git rev-list command to
control what is shown and how, and options applicable to the git diff-*
commands to control how the changes each commit introduces are shown.

OPTIONS
--follow
Continue listing the history of a file beyond renames (works only
for a single file).

--no-decorate, --decorate[=short|full|auto|no]
Print out the ref names of any commits that are shown. If short is
specified, the ref name prefixes refs/heads/, refs/tags/ and
refs/remotes/ will not be printed. If full is specified, the full
ref name (including prefix) will be printed. If auto is specified,
then if the output is going to a terminal, the ref names are shown
as if short were given, otherwise no ref names are shown. The
default option is short.

--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.

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

--[no-]use-mailmap
Use mailmap file to map author and committer names and email
addresses to canonical real names and email addresses. See git-
shortlog(1).

--full-diff
Without this flag, git log -p <path>... shows commits that touch
the specified paths, and diffs about the same specified paths. With
this, the full diff is shown for commits that touch the specified
paths; this means that "<path>..." limits only commits, and doesn't
limit diff for those commits.

Note that this affects all diff-based output types, e.g. those
produced by --stat, etc.

--log-size
Include a line "log size <number>" in the output for each commit,
where <number> is the length of that commit's message in bytes.
Intended to speed up tools that read log messages from git log
output by allowing them to allocate space in advance.

-L <start>,<end>:<file>, -L :<funcname>:<file>
Trace the evolution of the line range given by "<start>,<end>" (or
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:

o number

If <start> or <end> is a number, it specifies an absolute line
number (lines count from 1).

o /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>.

o +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.

<revision range>
Show only commits in the specified revision range. When no
<revision range> is specified, it defaults to HEAD (i.e. the whole
history leading to the current commit). origin..HEAD specifies all
the commits reachable from the current commit (i.e. HEAD), but not
from origin. For a complete list of ways to spell <revision range>,
see the Specifying Ranges section of gitrevisions(7).

[--] <path>...
Show only commits that are enough to explain how the files that
match the specified paths came to be. See History Simplification
below for details and other simplification modes.

Paths may need to be prefixed with -- to separate them from options
or the revision range, when confusion arises.

Commit Limiting
Besides specifying a range of commits that should be listed using the
special notations explained in the description, additional commit
limiting may be applied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--first-parent
Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit.
This option can give a better overview when viewing the evolution
of a particular topic branch, because merges into a topic branch
tend to be only about adjusting to updated upstream from time to
time, and this option allows you to ignore the individual commits
brought in to your history by such a merge. Cannot be combined with
--bisect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Otherwise, show the index format.

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

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

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

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

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

The following options select the commits to be shown:

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

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

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

The following options affect the way the simplification is performed:

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

--full-history
Same as the default mode, but does not prune some history.

--dense
Only the selected commits are shown, plus some to have a meaningful
history.

--sparse
All commits in the simplified history are shown.

--simplify-merges
Additional option to --full-history to remove some needless merges
from the resulting history, as there are no selected commits
contributing to this merge.

--ancestry-path
When given a range of commits to display (e.g. commit1..commit2 or
commit2 ^commit1), only display commits that exist directly on the
ancestry chain between the commit1 and commit2, i.e. commits that
are both descendants of commit1, and ancestors of commit2.

A more detailed explanation follows.

Suppose you specified foo as the <paths>. We shall call commits that
modify foo !TREESAME, and the rest TREESAME. (In a diff filtered for
foo, they look different and equal, respectively.)

In the following, we will always refer to the same example history to
illustrate the differences between simplification settings. We assume
that you are filtering for a file foo in this commit graph:

.-A---M---N---O---P---Q
/ / / / / /
I B C D E Y
\ / / / / /
`-------------' X

The horizontal line of history A---Q is taken to be the first parent of
each merge. The commits are:

o 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.

o In A, foo contains just "foo".

o B contains the same change as A. Its merge M is trivial and hence
TREESAME to all parents.

o C does not change foo, but its merge N changes it to "foobar", so
it is not TREESAME to any parent.

o 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.

o E changes quux to "xyzzy", and its merge P combines the strings to
"quux xyzzy". P is TREESAME to O, but not to E.

o X is an independent root commit that added a new file side, and Y
modified it. Y is TREESAME to X. Its merge Q added side to P, and
Q is TREESAME to P, but not to Y.

rev-list walks backwards through history, including or excluding
commits based on whether --full-history and/or parent rewriting (via
--parents or --children) are used. The following settings are
available.

Default mode
Commits are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent (though
this can be changed, see --sparse below). If the commit was a
merge, and it was TREESAME to one parent, follow only that parent.
(Even if there are several TREESAME parents, follow only one of
them.) Otherwise, follow all parents.

This results in:

.-A---N---O
/ / /
I---------D

Note how the rule to only follow the TREESAME parent, if one is
available, removed B from consideration entirely. C was considered
via N, but is TREESAME. Root commits are compared to an empty tree,
so I is !TREESAME.

Parent/child relations are only visible with --parents, but that
does not affect the commits selected in default mode, so we have
shown the parent lines.

--full-history without parent rewriting
This mode differs from the default in one point: always follow all
parents of a merge, even if it is TREESAME to one of them. Even if
more than one side of the merge has commits that are included, this
does not imply that the merge itself is! In the example, we get

I A B N D O P Q

M was excluded because it is TREESAME to both parents. E, C and B
were all walked, but only B was !TREESAME, so the others do not
appear.

Note that without parent rewriting, it is not really possible to
talk about the parent/child relationships between the commits, so
we show them disconnected.

--full-history with parent rewriting
Ordinary commits are only included if they are !TREESAME (though
this can be changed, see --sparse below).

Merges are always included. However, their parent list is
rewritten: Along each parent, prune away commits that are not
included themselves. This results in

.-A---M---N---O---P---Q
/ / / / /
I B / D /
\ / / / /
`-------------'

Compare to --full-history without rewriting above. Note that E was
pruned away because it is TREESAME, but the parent list of P was
rewritten to contain E's parent I. The same happened for C and N,
and X, Y and Q.

In addition to the above settings, you can change whether TREESAME
affects inclusion:

--dense
Commits that are walked are included if they are not TREESAME to
any parent.

--sparse
All commits that are walked are included.

Note that without --full-history, this still simplifies merges: if
one of the parents is TREESAME, we follow only that one, so the
other sides of the merge are never walked.

--simplify-merges
First, build a history graph in the same way that --full-history
with parent rewriting does (see above).

Then simplify each commit C to its replacement C' in the final
history according to the following rules:

o Set C' to C.

o 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.

o 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:

o N's parent list had I removed, because it is an ancestor of the
other parent M. Still, N remained because it is !TREESAME.

o P's parent list similarly had I removed. P was then removed
completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME.

o 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.

Finally, there is a fifth simplification mode available:

--ancestry-path
Limit the displayed commits to those directly on the ancestry chain
between the "from" and "to" commits in the given commit range. I.e.
only display commits that are ancestor of the "to" commit and
descendants of the "from" commit.

As an example use case, consider the following commit history:

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

The --simplify-by-decoration option allows you to view only the big
picture of the topology of the history, by omitting commits that are
not referenced by tags. Commits are marked as !TREESAME (in other
words, kept after history simplification rules described above) if (1)
they are referenced by tags, or (2) they change the contents of the
paths given on the command line. All other commits are marked as
TREESAME (subject to be simplified away).

Commit Ordering
By default, the commits are shown in reverse chronological order.

--date-order
Show no parents before all of its children are shown, but otherwise
show commits in the commit timestamp order.

--author-date-order
Show no parents before all of its children are shown, but otherwise
show commits in the author timestamp order.

--topo-order
Show no parents before all of its children are shown, and avoid
showing commits on multiple lines of history intermixed.

For example, in a commit history like this:

---1----2----4----7
\ \
3----5----6----8---

where the numbers denote the order of commit timestamps, git
rev-list and friends with --date-order show the commits in the
timestamp order: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1.

With --topo-order, they would show 8 6 5 3 7 4 2 1 (or 8 7 4 2 6 5
3 1); some older commits are shown before newer ones in order to
avoid showing the commits from two parallel development track mixed
together.

--reverse
Output the commits chosen to be shown (see Commit Limiting section
above) in reverse order. Cannot be combined with --walk-reflogs.

Object Traversal
These options are mostly targeted for packing of Git repositories.

--no-walk[=(sorted|unsorted)]
Only show the given commits, but do not traverse their ancestors.
This has no effect if a range is specified. If the argument
unsorted is given, the commits are shown in the order they were
given on the command line. Otherwise (if sorted or no argument was
given), the commits are shown in reverse chronological order by
commit time. Cannot be combined with --graph.

--do-walk
Overrides a previous --no-walk.

Commit Formatting
--pretty[=<format>], --format=<format>
Pretty-print the contents of the commit logs in a given format,
where <format> can be one of oneline, short, medium, full, fuller,
reference, email, raw, format:<string> and tformat:<string>. When
<format> is none of the above, and has %placeholder in it, it acts
as if --pretty=tformat:<format> were given.

See the "PRETTY FORMATS" section for some additional details for
each format. When =<format> part is omitted, it defaults to medium.

Note: you can specify the default pretty format in the repository
configuration (see git-config(1)).

--abbrev-commit
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name,
show only a partial prefix. Non default number of digits can be
specified with "--abbrev=<n>" (which also modifies diff output, if
it is displayed).

This should make "--pretty=oneline" a whole lot more readable for
people using 80-column terminals.

--no-abbrev-commit
Show the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name. This negates
--abbrev-commit and those options which imply it such as
"--oneline". It also overrides the log.abbrevCommit variable.

--oneline
This is a shorthand for "--pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit" used
together.

--encoding=<encoding>
The commit objects record the encoding used for the log message in
their encoding header; this option can be used to tell the command
to re-code the commit log message in the encoding preferred by the
user. For non plumbing commands this defaults to UTF-8. 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.

--expand-tabs=<n>, --expand-tabs, --no-expand-tabs
Perform a tab expansion (replace each tab with enough spaces to
fill to the next display column that is multiple of <n>) in the log
message before showing it in the output. --expand-tabs is a
short-hand for --expand-tabs=8, and --no-expand-tabs is a
short-hand for --expand-tabs=0, which disables tab expansion.

By default, tabs are expanded in pretty formats that indent the log
message by 4 spaces (i.e. medium, which is the default, full, and
fuller).

--notes[=<ref>]
Show the notes (see git-notes(1)) that annotate the commit, when
showing the commit log message. This is the default for git log,
git show and git whatchanged commands when there is no --pretty,
--format, or --oneline option given on the command line.

By default, the notes shown are from the notes refs listed in the
core.notesRef and notes.displayRef variables (or corresponding
environment overrides). See git-config(1) for more details.

With an optional <ref> argument, use the ref to find the notes to
display. The ref can specify the full refname when it begins with
refs/notes/; when it begins with notes/, refs/ and otherwise
refs/notes/ is prefixed to form a full name of the ref.

Multiple --notes options can be combined to control which notes are
being displayed. Examples: "--notes=foo" will show only notes from
"refs/notes/foo"; "--notes=foo --notes" will show both notes from
"refs/notes/foo" and from the default notes ref(s).

--no-notes
Do not show notes. This negates the above --notes option, by
resetting the list of notes refs from which notes are shown.
Options are parsed in the order given on the command line, so e.g.
"--notes --notes=foo --no-notes --notes=bar" will only show notes
from "refs/notes/bar".

--show-notes[=<ref>], --[no-]standard-notes
These options are deprecated. Use the above --notes/--no-notes
options instead.

--show-signature
Check the validity of a signed commit object by passing the
signature to gpg --verify and show the output.

--relative-date
Synonym for --date=relative.

--date=<format>
Only takes effect for dates shown in human-readable format, such as
when using --pretty. log.date config variable sets a default value
for the log command's --date option. By default, dates are shown in
the original time zone (either committer's or author's). If -local
is appended to the format (e.g., iso-local), the user's local time
zone is used instead.

--date=relative shows dates relative to the current time, e.g. "2
hours ago". The -local option has no effect for --date=relative.

--date=local is an alias for --date=default-local.

--date=iso (or --date=iso8601) shows timestamps in a ISO 8601-like
format. The differences to the strict ISO 8601 format are:

o a space instead of the T date/time delimiter

o a space between time and time zone

o 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:

o there is no comma after the day-of-week

o the time zone is omitted when the local time zone is used

--parents
Print also the parents of the commit (in the form "commit
parent..."). Also enables parent rewriting, see History
Simplification above.

--children
Print also the children of the commit (in the form "commit
child..."). Also enables parent rewriting, see History
Simplification above.

--left-right
Mark which side of a symmetric difference a commit is reachable
from. Commits from the left side are prefixed with < and those from
the right with >. If combined with --boundary, those commits are
prefixed with -.

For example, if you have this topology:

y---b---b branch B
/ \ /
/ .
/ / \
o---x---a---a branch A

you would get an output like this:

$ git rev-list --left-right --boundary --pretty=oneline A...B

>bbbbbbb... 3rd on b
>bbbbbbb... 2nd on b
<aaaaaaa... 3rd on a
<aaaaaaa... 2nd on a
-yyyyyyy... 1st on b
-xxxxxxx... 1st on a

--graph
Draw a text-based graphical representation of the commit history on
the left hand side of the output. This may cause extra lines to be
printed in between commits, in order for the graph history to be
drawn properly. Cannot be combined with --no-walk.

This enables parent rewriting, see History Simplification above.

This implies the --topo-order option by default, but the
--date-order option may also be specified.

--show-linear-break[=<barrier>]
When --graph is not used, all history branches are flattened which
can make it hard to see that the two consecutive commits do not
belong to a linear branch. This option puts a barrier in between
them in that case. If <barrier> is specified, it is the string that
will be shown instead of the default one.

Diff Formatting
Listed below are options that control the formatting of diff output.
Some of them are specific to git-rev-list(1), however other diff
options may be given. See git-diff-files(1) for more options.

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

--cc
This flag implies the -c option and further compresses the patch
output by omitting uninteresting hunks whose contents in the
parents have only two variants and the merge result picks one of
them without modification.

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

-m
This flag makes the merge commits show the full diff like regular
commits; for each merge parent, a separate log entry and diff is
generated. An exception is that only diff against the first parent
is shown when --first-parent option is given; in that case, the
output represents the changes the merge brought into the
then-current branch.

-r
Show recursive diffs.

-t
Show the tree objects in the diff output. This implies -r.

PRETTY FORMATS
If the commit is a merge, and if the pretty-format is not oneline,
email or raw, an additional line is inserted before the Author: line.
This line begins with "Merge: " and the hashes of ancestral commits are
printed, separated by spaces. Note that the listed commits may not
necessarily be the list of the direct parent commits if you have
limited your view of history: for example, if you are only interested
in changes related to a certain directory or file.

There are several built-in formats, and you can define additional
formats by setting a pretty.<name> config option to either another
format name, or a format: string, as described below (see git-
config(1)). Here are the details of the built-in formats:

o oneline

This is designed to be as compact as possible.

o short

commit <hash>
Author: <author>

o medium

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

o full

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

o fuller

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

o reference

<abbrev hash> (<title line>, <short author date>)

This format is used to refer to another commit in a commit message
and is the same as --pretty='format:%C(auto)%h (%s, %ad)'. By
default, the date is formatted with --date=short unless another
--date option is explicitly specified. As with any format: with
format placeholders, its output is not affected by other options
like --decorate and --walk-reflogs.

o email

From <hash> <date>
From: <author>
Date: <author date>
Subject: [PATCH] <title line>

o raw

The raw format shows the entire commit exactly as stored in the
commit object. Notably, the hashes are displayed in full,
regardless of whether --abbrev or --no-abbrev are used, and parents
information show the true parent commits, without taking grafts or
history simplification into account. Note that this format affects
the way commits are displayed, but not the way the diff is shown
e.g. with git log --raw. To get full object names in a raw diff
format, use --no-abbrev.

o format:<string>

The format:<string> format allows you to specify which information
you want to show. It works a little bit like printf format, with
the notable exception that you get a newline with %n instead of \n.

E.g, format:"The author of %h was %an, %ar%nThe title was >>%s<<%n"
would show something like this:

The author of fe6e0ee was Junio C Hamano, 23 hours ago
The title was >>t4119: test autocomputing -p<n> for traditional diff input.<<

The placeholders are:

o Placeholders that expand to a single literal character:

%n
newline

%%
a raw %

%x00
print a byte from a hex code

o Placeholders that affect formatting of later placeholders:

%Cred
switch color to red

%Cgreen
switch color to green

%Cblue
switch color to blue

%Creset
reset color

%C(...)
color specification, as described under Values in the
"CONFIGURATION FILE" section of git-config(1). By default,
colors are shown only when enabled for log output (by
color.diff, color.ui, or --color, and respecting the auto
settings of the former if we are going to a terminal).
%C(auto,...) is accepted as a historical synonym for the
default (e.g., %C(auto,red)). Specifying %C(always,...)
will show the colors even when color is not otherwise
enabled (though consider just using --color=always to
enable color for the whole output, including this format
and anything else git might color). auto alone (i.e.
%C(auto)) will turn on auto coloring on the next
placeholders until the color is switched again.

%m
left (<), right (>) or boundary (-) mark

%w([<w>[,<i1>[,<i2>]]])
switch line wrapping, like the -w option of git-
shortlog(1).

%<(git-shortlog(1) or
git-blame(1))

%ae
author email

%aE
author email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or
git-blame(1))

%al
author email local-part (the part before the @ sign)

%aL
author local-part (see %al) respecting .mailmap, see git-
shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))

%ad
author date (format respects --date= option)

%aD
author date, RFC2822 style

%ar
author date, relative

%at
author date, UNIX timestamp

%ai
author date, ISO 8601-like format

%aI
author date, strict ISO 8601 format

%as
author date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)

%cn
committer name

%cN
committer name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or
git-blame(1))

%ce
committer email

%cE
committer email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1)
or git-blame(1))

%cl
author email local-part (the part before the @ sign)

%cL
author local-part (see %cl) respecting .mailmap, see git-
shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))

%cd
committer date (format respects --date= option)

%cD
committer date, RFC2822 style

%cr
committer date, relative

%ct
committer date, UNIX timestamp

%ci
committer date, ISO 8601-like format

%cI
committer date, strict ISO 8601 format

%cs
committer date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)

%d
ref names, like the --decorate option of git-log(1)

%D
ref names without the " (", ")" wrapping.

%S
ref name given on the command line by which the commit was
reached (like git log --source), only works with git log

%e
encoding

%s
subject

%f
sanitized subject line, suitable for a filename

%b
body

%B
raw body (unwrapped subject and body)

%N
commit notes

%GG
raw verification message from GPG for a signed commit

%G?
show "G" for a good (valid) signature, "B" for a bad
signature, "U" for a good signature with unknown validity,
"X" for a good signature that has expired, "Y" for a good
signature made by an expired key, "R" for a good signature
made by a revoked key, "E" if the signature cannot be
checked (e.g. missing key) and "N" for no signature

%GS
show the name of the signer for a signed commit

%GK
show the key used to sign a signed commit

%GF
show the fingerprint of the key used to sign a signed
commit

%GP
show the fingerprint of the primary key whose subkey was
used to sign a signed commit

%gD
reflog selector, e.g., refs/stash@{1} or refs/stash@{2
minutes ago}; the format follows the rules described for
the -g option. The portion before the @ is the refname as
given on the command line (so git log -g refs/heads/master
would yield refs/heads/master@{0}).

%gd
shortened reflog selector; same as %gD, but the refname
portion is shortened for human readability (so
refs/heads/master becomes just master).

%gn
reflog identity name

%gN
reflog identity name (respecting .mailmap, see git-
shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))

%ge
reflog identity email

%gE
reflog identity email (respecting .mailmap, see git-
shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))

%gs
reflog subject

%(trailers[:options])
display the trailers of the body as interpreted by git-
interpret-trailers(1). The trailers string may be followed
by a colon and zero or more comma-separated options:

o key=<K>: only show trailers with specified key.
Matching is done case-insensitively and trailing colon
is optional. If option is given multiple times trailer
lines matching any of the keys are shown. This option
automatically enables the only option so that
non-trailer lines in the trailer block are hidden. If
that is not desired it can be disabled with only=false.
E.g., %(trailers:key=Reviewed-by) shows trailer lines
with key Reviewed-by.

o only[=val]: select whether non-trailer lines from the
trailer block should be included. The only keyword may
optionally be followed by an equal sign and one of
true, on, yes to omit or false, off, no to show the
non-trailer lines. If option is given without value it
is enabled. If given multiple times the last value is
used.

o separator=<SEP>: specify a separator inserted between
trailer lines. When this option is not given each
trailer line is terminated with a line feed character.
The string SEP may contain the literal formatting codes
described above. To use comma as separator one must use
%x2C as it would otherwise be parsed as next option. If
separator option is given multiple times only the last
one is used. E.g., %(trailers:key=Ticket,separator=%x2C
) shows all trailer lines whose key is "Ticket"
separated by a comma and a space.

o unfold[=val]: make it behave as if interpret-trailer's
--unfold option was given. In same way as to for only
it can be followed by an equal sign and explicit value.
E.g., %(trailers:only,unfold=true) unfolds and shows
all trailer lines.

o valueonly[=val]: skip over the key part of the trailer
line and only show the value part. Also this optionally
allows explicit value.

Note
Some placeholders may depend on other options given to the revision
traversal engine. For example, the %g* reflog options will insert
an empty string unless we are traversing reflog entries (e.g., by
git log -g). The %d and %D placeholders will use the "short"
decoration format if --decorate was not already provided on the
command line.

If you add a + (plus sign) after % of a placeholder, a line-feed is
inserted immediately before the expansion if and only if the
placeholder expands to a non-empty string.

If you add a - (minus sign) after % of a placeholder, all consecutive
line-feeds immediately preceding the expansion are deleted if and only
if the placeholder expands to an empty string.

If you add a ` ` (space) after % of a placeholder, a space is inserted
immediately before the expansion if and only if the placeholder expands
to a non-empty string.

o tformat:

The tformat: format works exactly like format:, except that it
provides "terminator" semantics instead of "separator" semantics.
In other words, each commit has the message terminator character
(usually a newline) appended, rather than a separator placed
between entries. This means that the final entry of a single-line
format will be properly terminated with a new line, just as the
"oneline" format does. For example:

$ git log -2 --pretty=format:%h 4da45bef \
| perl -pe '$_ .= " -- NO NEWLINE\n" unless /\n/'
4da45be
7134973 -- NO NEWLINE

$ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef \
| perl -pe '$_ .= " -- NO NEWLINE\n" unless /\n/'
4da45be
7134973

In addition, any unrecognized string that has a % in it is
interpreted as if it has tformat: in front of it. For example,
these two are equivalent:

$ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef
$ git log -2 --pretty=%h 4da45bef

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--minimal
Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is
produced.

--patience
Generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.

--histogram
Generate a diff using the "histogram diff" algorithm.

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

This option may be specified more than once.

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

--diff-algorithm={patience|minimal|histogram|myers}
Choose a diff algorithm. The variants are as follows:

default, myers
The basic greedy diff algorithm. Currently, this is the
default.

minimal
Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is
produced.

patience
Use "patience diff" algorithm when generating patches.

histogram
This algorithm extends the patience algorithm to "support
low-occurrence common elements".

For instance, if you configured the diff.algorithm variable to a
non-default value and want to use the default one, then you have to
use --diff-algorithm=default option.

--stat[=<width>[,<name-width>[,<count>]]]
Generate a diffstat. By default, as much space as necessary will be
used for the filename part, and the rest for the graph part.
Maximum width defaults to terminal width, or 80 columns if not
connected to a terminal, and can be overridden by <width>. The
width of the filename part can be limited by giving another width
<name-width> after a comma. The width of the graph part can be
limited by using --stat-graph-width=<width> (affects all commands
generating a stat graph) or by setting diff.statGraphWidth=<width>
(does not affect git format-patch). By giving a third parameter
<count>, you can limit the output to the first <count> lines,
followed by ... if there are more.

These parameters can also be set individually with
--stat-width=<width>, --stat-name-width=<name-width> and
--stat-count=<count>.

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

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

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

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

changes
Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that have
been removed from the source, or added to the destination. This
ignores the amount of pure code movements within a file. In
other words, rearranging lines in a file is not counted as much
as other changes. This is the default behavior when no
parameter is given.

lines
Compute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular line-based
diff analysis, and summing the removed/added line counts. (For
binary files, count 64-byte chunks instead, since binary files
have no natural concept of lines). This is a more expensive
--dirstat behavior than the changes behavior, but it does count
rearranged lines within a file as much as other changes. The
resulting output is consistent with what you get from the other
--*stat options.

files
Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of files
changed. Each changed file counts equally in the dirstat
analysis. This is the computationally cheapest --dirstat
behavior, since it does not have to look at the file contents
at all.

cumulative
Count changes in a child directory for the parent directory as
well. Note that when using cumulative, the sum of the
percentages reported may exceed 100%. The default
(non-cumulative) behavior can be specified with the
noncumulative parameter.

<limit>
An integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by
default). Directories contributing less than this percentage of
the changes are not shown in the output.

Example: The following will count changed files, while ignoring
directories with less than 10% of the total amount of changed
files, and accumulating child directory counts in the parent
directories: --dirstat=files,10,cumulative.

--cumulative
Synonym for --dirstat=cumulative

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

--summary
Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as
creations, renames and mode changes.

--patch-with-stat
Synonym for -p --stat.

-z
Separate the commits with NULs instead of with new newlines.

Also, when --raw or --numstat has been given, do not munge
pathnames and use NULs as output field terminators.

Without this option, pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted
as explained for the configuration variable core.quotePath (see
git-config(1)).

--name-only
Show only names of changed files.

--name-status
Show only names and status of changed files. See the description of
the --diff-filter option on what the status letters mean.

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

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

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

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

no
Moved lines are not highlighted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

no
Do not ignore whitespace when performing move detection.

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

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

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

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

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

--word-diff[=<mode>]
Show a word diff, using the <mode> to delimit changed words. By
default, words are delimited by whitespace; see --word-diff-regex
below. The <mode> defaults to plain, and must be one of:

color
Highlight changed words using only colors. Implies --color.

plain
Show words as [-removed-] and {+added+}. Makes no attempts to
escape the delimiters if they appear in the input, so the
output may be ambiguous.

porcelain
Use a special line-based format intended for script
consumption. Added/removed/unchanged runs are printed in the
usual unified diff format, starting with a +/-/` ` character at
the beginning of the line and extending to the end of the line.
Newlines in the input are represented by a tilde ~ on a line of
its own.

none
Disable word diff again.

Note that despite the name of the first mode, color is used to
highlight the changed parts in all modes if enabled.

--word-diff-regex=<regex>
Use <regex> to decide what a word is, instead of considering runs
of non-whitespace to be a word. Also implies --word-diff unless it
was already enabled.

Every non-overlapping match of the <regex> is considered a word.
Anything between these matches is considered whitespace and
ignored(!) for the purposes of finding differences. You may want to
append |[^[:space:]] to your regular expression to make sure that
it matches all non-whitespace characters. A match that contains a
newline is silently truncated(!) at the newline.

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

The regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration
option, see gitattributes(5) or git-config(1). Giving it explicitly
overrides any diff driver or configuration setting. Diff drivers
override configuration settings.

--color-words[=<regex>]
Equivalent to --word-diff=color plus (if a regex was specified)
--word-diff-regex=<regex>.

--no-renames
Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration file gives
the default to do so.

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

--check
Warn if changes introduce conflict markers or whitespace errors.
What are considered whitespace errors is controlled by
core.whitespace configuration. By default, trailing whitespaces
(including lines that consist solely of whitespaces) and a space
character that is immediately followed by a tab character inside
the initial indent of the line are considered whitespace errors.
Exits with non-zero status if problems are found. Not compatible
with --exit-code.

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

--full-index
Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full pre- and
post-image blob object names on the "index" line when generating
patch format output.

--binary
In addition to --full-index, output a binary diff that can be
applied with git-apply. Implies --patch.

--abbrev[=<n>]
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name in
diff-raw format output and diff-tree header lines, show only a
partial prefix. This is independent of the --full-index option
above, which controls the diff-patch output format. Non default
number of digits can be specified with --abbrev=<n>.

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

It affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite of a
file not as a series of deletion and insertion mixed together with
a very few lines that happen to match textually as the context, but
as a single deletion of everything old followed by a single
insertion of everything new, and the number m controls this aspect
of the -B option (defaults to 60%). -B/70% specifies that less
than 30% of the original should remain in the result for Git to
consider it a total rewrite (i.e. otherwise the resulting patch
will be a series of deletion and insertion mixed together with
context lines).

When used with -M, a totally-rewritten file is also considered as
the source of a rename (usually -M only considers a file that
disappeared as the source of a rename), and the number n controls
this aspect of the -B option (defaults to 50%). -B20% specifies
that a change with addition and deletion compared to 20% or more of
the file's size are eligible for being picked up as a possible
source of a rename to another file.

-M[<n>], --find-renames[=<n>]
If generating diffs, detect and report renames for each commit. For
following files across renames while traversing history, see
--follow. If n is specified, it is a threshold on the similarity
index (i.e. amount of addition/deletions compared to the file's
size). For example, -M90% means Git should consider a delete/add
pair to be a rename if more than 90% of the file hasn't changed.
Without a % sign, the number is to be read as a fraction, with a
decimal point before it. I.e., -M5 becomes 0.5, and is thus the
same as -M50%. Similarly, -M05 is the same as -M5%. To limit
detection to exact renames, use -M100%. The default similarity
index is 50%.

-C[<n>], --find-copies[=<n>]
Detect copies as well as renames. See also --find-copies-harder. If
n is specified, it has the same meaning as for -M<n>.

--find-copies-harder
For performance reasons, by default, -C option finds copies only if
the original file of the copy was modified in the same changeset.
This flag makes the command inspect unmodified files as candidates
for the source of copy. This is a very expensive operation for
large projects, so use it with caution. Giving more than one -C
option has the same effect.

-D, --irreversible-delete
Omit the preimage for deletes, i.e. print only the header but not
the diff between the preimage and /dev/null. The resulting patch is
not meant to be applied with patch or git apply; this is solely for
people who want to just concentrate on reviewing the text after the
change. In addition, the output obviously lacks enough information
to apply such a patch in reverse, even manually, hence the name of
the option.

When used together with -B, omit also the preimage in the deletion
part of a delete/create pair.

-l<num>
The -M and -C options require O(n^2) processing time where n is the
number of potential rename/copy targets. This option prevents
rename/copy detection from running if the number of rename/copy
targets exceeds the specified number.

--diff-filter=[(A|C|D|M|R|T|U|X|B)...[*]]
Select only files that are Added (A), Copied (C), Deleted (D),
Modified (M), Renamed (R), have their type (i.e. regular file,
symlink, submodule, ...) changed (T), are Unmerged (U), are Unknown
(X), or have had their pairing Broken (B). Any combination of the
filter characters (including none) can be used. When *
(All-or-none) is added to the combination, all paths are selected
if there is any file that matches other criteria in the comparison;
if there is no file that matches other criteria, nothing is
selected.

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

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

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

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

Binary files are searched as well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<orderfile> is parsed as follows:

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

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

o Each other line contains a single pattern.

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

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

--relative[=<path>]
When run from a subdirectory of the project, it can be told to
exclude changes outside the directory and show pathnames relative
to it with this option. When you are not in a subdirectory (e.g. in
a bare repository), you can name which subdirectory to make the
output relative to by giving a <path> as an argument.

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

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

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

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

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

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

--inter-hunk-context=<lines>
Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified number of
lines, thereby fusing hunks that are close to each other. Defaults
to diff.interHunkContext or 0 if the config option is unset.

-W, --function-context
Show whole surrounding functions of changes.

--ext-diff
Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set an
external diff driver with gitattributes(5), you need to use this
option with git-log(1) and friends.

--no-ext-diff
Disallow external diff drivers.

--textconv, --no-textconv
Allow (or disallow) external text conversion filters to be run when
comparing binary files. See gitattributes(5) for details. Because
textconv filters are typically a one-way conversion, the resulting
diff is suitable for human consumption, but cannot be applied. For
this reason, textconv filters are enabled by default only for git-
diff(1) and git-log(1), but not for git-format-patch(1) or diff
plumbing commands.

--ignore-submodules[=<when>]
Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation. <when> can be
either "none", "untracked", "dirty" or "all", which is the default.
Using "none" will consider the submodule modified when it either
contains untracked or modified files or its HEAD differs from the
commit recorded in the superproject and can be used to override any
settings of the ignore option in git-config(1) or gitmodules(5).
When "untracked" is used submodules are not considered dirty when
they only contain untracked content (but they are still scanned for
modified content). Using "dirty" ignores all changes to the work
tree of submodules, only changes to the commits stored in the
superproject are shown (this was the behavior until 1.7.0). Using
"all" hides all changes to submodules.

--src-prefix=<prefix>
Show the given source prefix instead of "a/".

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

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

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

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

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

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

What the -p option produces is slightly different from the traditional
diff format:

1. It is preceded with a "git diff" header that looks like this:

diff --git a/file1 b/file2

The a/ and b/ filenames are the same unless rename/copy is
involved. Especially, even for a creation or a deletion, /dev/null
is not used in place of the a/ or b/ filenames.

When rename/copy is involved, file1 and file2 show the name of the
source file of the rename/copy and the name of the file that
rename/copy produces, respectively.

2. It is followed by one or more extended header lines:

old mode <mode>
new mode <mode>
deleted file mode <mode>
new file mode <mode>
copy from <path>
copy to <path>
rename from <path>
rename to <path>
similarity index <number>
dissimilarity index <number>
index <hash>..<hash> <mode>

File modes are printed as 6-digit octal numbers including the file
type and file permission bits.

Path names in extended headers do not include the a/ and b/
prefixes.

The similarity index is the percentage of unchanged lines, and the
dissimilarity index is the percentage of changed lines. It is a
rounded down integer, followed by a percent sign. The similarity
index value of 100% is thus reserved for two equal files, while
100% dissimilarity means that no line from the old file made it
into the new one.

The index line includes the blob object names before and after the
change. The <mode> is included if the file mode does not change;
otherwise, separate lines indicate the old and the new mode.

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

4. All the file1 files in the output refer to files before the commit,
and all the file2 files refer to files after the commit. It is
incorrect to apply each change to each file sequentially. For
example, this patch will swap a and b:

diff --git a/a b/b
rename from a
rename to b
diff --git a/b b/a
rename from b
rename to a

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

A "combined diff" format looks like this:

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

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

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

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

diff --combined file

or like this (when the --cc option is used):

diff --cc file

2. It is followed by one or more extended header lines (this example
shows a merge with two parents):

index <hash>,<hash>..<hash>
mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode>
new file mode <mode>
deleted file mode <mode>,<mode>

The mode <mode>,<mode>..<mode> line appears only if at least one of
the <mode> is different from the rest. Extended headers with
information about detected contents movement (renames and copying
detection) are designed to work with diff of two <tree-ish> and are
not used by combined diff format.

3. It is followed by two-line from-file/to-file header

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

Similar to two-line header for traditional unified diff format,
/dev/null is used to signal created or deleted files.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A - character in the column N means that the line appears in fileN but
it does not appear in the result. A + character in the column N means
that the line appears in the result, and fileN does not have that line
(in other words, the line was added, from the point of view of that
parent).

In the above example output, the function signature was changed from
both files (hence two - removals from both file1 and file2, plus ++ to
mean one line that was added does not appear in either file1 or file2).
Also eight other lines are the same from file1 but do not appear in
file2 (hence prefixed with +).

When shown by git diff-tree -c, it compares the parents of a merge
commit with the merge result (i.e. file1..fileN are the parents). When
shown by git diff-files -c, it compares the two unresolved merge
parents with the working tree file (i.e. file1 is stage 2 aka "our
version", file2 is stage 3 aka "their version").

EXAMPLES
git log --no-merges
Show the whole commit history, but skip any merges

git log v2.6.12.. include/scsi drivers/scsi
Show all commits since version v2.6.12 that changed any file in the
include/scsi or drivers/scsi subdirectories

git log --since="2 weeks ago" -- gitk
Show the changes during the last two weeks to the file gitk. The --
is necessary to avoid confusion with the branch named gitk

git log --name-status release..test
Show the commits that are in the "test" branch but not yet in the
"release" branch, along with the list of paths each commit
modifies.

git log --follow builtin/rev-list.c
Shows the commits that changed builtin/rev-list.c, including those
commits that occurred before the file was given its present name.

git log --branches --not --remotes=origin
Shows all commits that are in any of local branches but not in any
of remote-tracking branches for origin (what you have that origin
doesn't).

git log master --not --remotes=*/master
Shows all commits that are in local master but not in any remote
repository master branches.

git log -p -m --first-parent
Shows the history including change diffs, but only from the "main
branch" perspective, skipping commits that come from merged
branches, and showing full diffs of changes introduced by the
merges. This makes sense only when following a strict policy of
merging all topic branches when staying on a single integration
branch.

git log -L '/int main/',/^}/:main.c
Shows how the function main() in the file main.c evolved over time.

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

DISCUSSION
Git is to some extent character encoding agnostic.

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

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

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

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

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

1. git commit and git commit-tree issues a warning if the commit log
message given to it does not look like a valid UTF-8 string, unless
you explicitly say your project uses a legacy encoding. The way to
say this is to have i18n.commitencoding in .git/config file, like
this:

[i18n]
commitEncoding = ISO-8859-1

Commit objects created with the above setting record the value of
i18n.commitEncoding in its encoding header. This is to help other
people who look at them later. Lack of this header implies that the
commit log message is encoded in UTF-8.

2. git log, git show, git blame and friends look at the encoding
header of a commit object, and try to re-code the log message into
UTF-8 unless otherwise specified. You can specify the desired
output encoding with i18n.logOutputEncoding in .git/config file,
like this:

[i18n]
logOutputEncoding = ISO-8859-1

If you do not have this configuration variable, the value of
i18n.commitEncoding is used instead.

Note that we deliberately chose not to re-code the commit log message
when a commit is made to force UTF-8 at the commit object level,
because re-coding to UTF-8 is not necessarily a reversible operation.

CONFIGURATION
See git-config(1) for core variables and git-diff(1) for settings
related to diff generation.

format.pretty
Default for the --format option. (See Pretty Formats above.)
Defaults to medium.

i18n.logOutputEncoding
Encoding to use when displaying logs. (See Discussion above.)
Defaults to the value of i18n.commitEncoding if set, and UTF-8
otherwise.

log.date
Default format for human-readable dates. (Compare the --date
option.) Defaults to "default", which means to write dates like Sat
May 8 19:35:34 2010 -0500.

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

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

log.showRoot
If false, git log and related commands will not treat the initial
commit as a big creation event. Any root commits in git log -p
output would be shown without a diff attached. The default is true.

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

mailmap.*
See git-shortlog(1).

notes.displayRef
Which refs, in addition to the default set by core.notesRef or
GIT_NOTES_REF, to read notes from when showing commit messages with
the log family of commands. See git-notes(1).

May be an unabbreviated ref name or a glob and may be specified
multiple times. A warning will be issued for refs that do not
exist, but a glob that does not match any refs is silently ignored.

This setting can be disabled by the --no-notes option, overridden
by the GIT_NOTES_DISPLAY_REF environment variable, and overridden
by the --notes=<ref> option.

GIT
Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.25.1 04/26/2023 GIT-LOG(1)

git-log

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