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Administration
Plumbing Commands
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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
--show-notes
is in effect, the message from the notes as if it is part of the log message. - --all-match
-
Limit the commits output to ones that match all given
--grep
, instead of ones that match at least one. - -i
- --regexp-ignore-case
-
Match the 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).
- --perl-regexp
-
Consider the limiting patterns to be Perl-compatible regular expressions. Requires libpcre to be compiled in.
- --remove-empty
-
Stop when a given path disappears from the tree.
- --merges
-
Print only merge commits. This is exactly the same as
--min-parents=2
. - --no-merges
-
Do not print commits with more than one parent. This is exactly the same as
--max-parents=1
. - --min-parents=<number>
- --max-parents=<number>
- --no-min-parents
- --no-max-parents
-
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.
- --not
-
Reverses the meaning of the ^ prefix (or lack thereof) for all following revision specifiers, up to the next
--not
. - --all
-
Pretend as if all the refs in
refs/
are listed on the command line as <commit>. - --branches[=<pattern>]
-
Pretend as if all the refs in
refs/heads
are listed on the command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit branches to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied. - --tags[=<pattern>]
-
Pretend as if all the refs in
refs/tags
are listed on the command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit tags to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied. - --remotes[=<pattern>]
-
Pretend as if all the refs in
refs/remotes
are listed on the command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit remote-tracking branches to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied. - --glob=<glob-pattern>
-
Pretend as if all the refs matching shell glob <glob-pattern> are listed on the command line as <commit>. Leading refs/, is automatically prepended if missing. If pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.
- --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 accumlated patterns).The patterns given should not begin with
refs/heads
,refs/tags
, orrefs/remotes
when applied to--branches
,--tags
, or--remotes
, respectively, and they must begin withrefs/
when applied to--glob
or--all
. If a trailing /* is intended, it must be given explicitly. - --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 refsrefs/bisect/good-*
on the command line. - --stdin
-
In addition to the <commit> listed on the command line, read them from the standard input. If a -- separator is seen, stop reading commits and start reading paths to limit the result.
- --cherry-mark
-
Like
--cherry-pick
(see below) but mark equivalent commits with=
rather than omitting them, and inequivalent ones with+
. - --cherry-pick
-
Omit any commit that introduces the same change as another commit on the “other side” when the set of commits are limited with symmetric difference.
For example, if you have two branches,
A
andB
, 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 range, i.e. only those which would be marked
<
resp.>
by--left-right
.For example,
--cherry-pick --right-only A...B
omits those commits fromB
which are inA
or are patch-equivalent to a commit inA
. In other words, this lists the+
commits fromgit 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 withgit log --cherry upstream...mybranch
, similar togit 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 thanoneline
(for obvious reasons), this causes the output to have two extra lines of information taken from the reflog. By default, commit@{Nth} notation is used in the output. When the starting commit is specified as commit@{now}, output also uses commit@{timestamp} notation instead. Under--pretty=oneline
, the commit message is prefixed with this information on the same line. This option cannot be combined with--reverse
. See also git-reflog[1]. - --merge
-
After a failed merge, show refs that touch files having a conflict and don’t exist on all heads to merge.
- --boundary
-
Output 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:
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:
-
I
is the initial commit, in whichfoo
exists with contents “asdf”, and a filequux
exists with contents “quux”. Initial commits are compared to an empty tree, soI
is !TREESAME. -
In
A
,foo
contains just “foo”. -
B
contains the same change asA
. Its mergeM
is trivial and hence TREESAME to all parents. -
C
does not changefoo
, but its mergeN
changes it to “foobar”, so it is not TREESAME to any parent. -
D
setsfoo
to “baz”. Its mergeO
combines the strings fromN
andD
to “foobarbaz”; i.e., it is not TREESAME to any parent. -
E
changesquux
to “xyzzy”, and its mergeP
combines the strings to “quux xyzzy”.P
is TREESAME toO
, but not toE
. -
X
is an independent root commit that added a new fileside
, andY
modified it.Y
is TREESAME toX
. Its mergeQ
addedside
toP
, andQ
is TREESAME toP
, but not toY
.
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 viaN
, but is TREESAME. Root commits are compared to an empty tree, soI
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
andB
were all walked, but onlyB
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 thatE
was pruned away because it is TREESAME, but the parent list of P was rewritten to containE
's parentI
. The same happened forC
andN
, andX
,Y
andQ
.
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 replacementC'
in the final history according to the following rules:-
Set
C'
toC
. -
Replace each parent
P
ofC'
with its simplificationP'
. 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
, andQ
over--full-history
:-
N
's parent list hadI
removed, because it is an ancestor of the other parentM
. Still,N
remained because it is !TREESAME. -
P
's parent list similarly hadI
removed.P
was then removed completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME. -
Q
's parent list hadY
simplified toX
.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 ofD
. This is useful to see what happened to the history leading toM
sinceD
, in the sense that “what doesM
have that did not exist inD
”. The result in this example would be all the commits, exceptA
andB
(andD
itself, of course).When we want to find out what commits in
M
are contaminated with the bug introduced byD
and need fixing, however, we might want to view only the subset of D..M that are actually descendants ofD
, i.e. excludingC
andK
. 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 in reverse order. Cannot be combined with
--walk-reflogs
.
Object Traversal
These options are mostly targeted for packing of Git repositories.
- --objects
-
Print the object IDs of any object referenced by the listed commits.
--objects foo ^bar
thus means “send me all object IDs which I need to download if I have the commit object bar but not foo”. - --objects-edge
-
Similar to
--objects
, but also print the IDs of excluded commits prefixed with a “-” character. This is used by git-pack-objects[1] to build “thin” pack, which records objects in deltified form based on objects contained in these excluded commits to reduce network traffic. - --unpacked
-
Only useful with
--objects
; print the object IDs that are not in packs. - --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 (ifsorted
or no argument was given), the commits are shown in reverse chronological order by commit time. - --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, email, raw and format:<string>. See the "PRETTY FORMATS" section for some additional details for each format. When omitted, the format defaults to medium.
Note: you can specify the default pretty format in the repository configuration (see git-config[1]).
- --abbrev-commit
-
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name, show only a partial prefix. Non default number of digits can be specified with "--abbrev=<n>" (which also modifies diff output, if it is displayed).
This should make "--pretty=oneline" a whole lot more readable for people using 80-column terminals.
- --no-abbrev-commit
-
Show the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name. This negates
--abbrev-commit
and those options which imply it such as "--oneline". It also overrides the log.abbrevCommit variable. - --oneline
-
This is a shorthand for "--pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit" used together.
- --encoding=<encoding>
-
The commit objects record the encoding used for the log message in their encoding header; this option can be used to tell the command to re-code the commit log message in the encoding preferred by the user. For non plumbing commands this defaults to UTF-8.
- --notes[=<ref>]
-
Show the notes (see git-notes[1]) that annotate the commit, when showing the commit log message. This is the default for
git log
,git show
andgit 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, show this notes ref instead of the default notes ref(s). The ref is taken to be in
refs/notes/
if it is not qualified.Multiple --notes options can be combined to control which notes are being displayed. Examples: "--notes=foo" will show only notes from "refs/notes/foo"; "--notes=foo --notes" will show both notes from "refs/notes/foo" and from the default notes ref(s).
- --no-notes
-
Do not show notes. This negates the above
--notes
option, by resetting the list of notes refs from which notes are shown. Options are parsed in the order given on the command line, so e.g. "--notes --notes=foo --no-notes --notes=bar" will only show notes from "refs/notes/bar". - --show-notes[=<ref>]
- --[no-]standard-notes
-
These options are deprecated. Use the above --notes/--no-notes options instead.
- --show-signature
-
Check the validity of a signed commit object by passing the signature to
gpg --verify
and show the output. - --relative-date
-
Synonym for
--date=relative
. - --date=(relative|local|default|iso|rfc|short|raw)
-
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.--date=relative
shows dates relative to the current time, e.g. “2 hours ago”.--date=local
shows timestamps in user’s local time zone.--date=iso
(or--date=iso8601
) shows timestamps in ISO 8601 format.--date=rfc
(or--date=rfc2822
) shows timestamps in RFC 2822 format, often found in email messages.--date=short
shows only the date, but not the time, inYYYY-MM-DD
format.--date=raw
shows the date in the internal raw Git format%s %z
format.--date=default
shows timestamps in the original time zone (either committer’s or author’s). - --parents
-
Print also the parents of the commit (in the form "commit parent…"). Also enables parent rewriting, see History Simplification below.
- --children
-
Print also the children of the commit (in the form "commit child…"). Also enables parent rewriting, see History Simplification below.
- --left-right
-
Mark which side of a symmetric diff a commit is reachable from. Commits from the left side are prefixed with
<
and those from the right with>
. If combined with--boundary
, those commits are prefixed with-
.For example, if you have this topology:
y---b---b branch B / \ / / . / / \ o---x---a---a branch A
you would get an output like this:
$ git rev-list --left-right --boundary --pretty=oneline A...B >bbbbbbb... 3rd on b >bbbbbbb... 2nd on b <aaaaaaa... 3rd on a <aaaaaaa... 2nd on a -yyyyyyy... 1st on b -xxxxxxx... 1st on a
- --graph
-
Draw a text-based graphical representation of the commit history on the left hand side of the output. This may cause extra lines to be printed in between commits, in order for the graph history to be drawn properly.
This enables parent rewriting, see History Simplification below.
This implies the
--topo-order
option by default, but the--date-order
option may also be specified. - --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. - -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
.