git-log(1) Git Manual git-log(1)
NAME
git-log - Show commit logs
SYNOPSIS
git log [<options>] [<revision-range>] [[--] <path>...]
DESCRIPTION
Shows the commit logs.
List commits that are reachable by following the parent links from the
given commit(s), but exclude commits that are reachable from the one(s)
given with a ^ in front of them. The output is given in reverse
chronological order by default.
You can think of this as a set operation. Commits reachable from any of
the commits given on the command line form a set, and then commits
reachable from any of the ones given with ^ in front are subtracted from
that set. The remaining commits are what comes out in the command's
output. Various other options and paths parameters can be used to further
limit the result.
Thus, the following command:
$ git log foo bar ^baz
means "list all the commits which are reachable from foo or bar, but not
from baz".
A special notation "<commit1>..<commit2>" can be used as a short-hand for
"^<commit1> <commit2>". For example, either of the following may be used
interchangeably:
$ git log origin..HEAD
$ git log HEAD ^origin
Another special notation is "<commit1>...<commit2>" which is useful for
merges. The resulting set of commits is the symmetric difference between
the two operands. The following two commands are equivalent:
$ git log A B --not $(git merge-base --all A B)
$ git log A...B
The command takes options applicable to the git-rev-list(1) command to
control what is shown and how, and options applicable to the git-diff(1)
command to control how the changes each commit introduces are shown.
OPTIONS
--follow
Continue listing the history of a file beyond renames (works only for
a single file).
--no-decorate, --decorate[=(short|full|auto|no)]
Print out the ref names of any commits that are shown. Possible
values are:
short
the ref name prefixes refs/heads/, refs/tags/ and refs/remotes/
are not printed.
full
the full ref name (including prefix) is printed.
auto
if the output is going to a terminal, the ref names are shown as
if short were given, otherwise no ref names are shown.
The option --decorate is short-hand for --decorate=short. Default to
configuration value of log.decorate if configured, otherwise, auto.
--decorate-refs=<pattern>, --decorate-refs-exclude=<pattern>
For each candidate reference, do not use it for decoration if it
matches any of the <pattern> parameters given to
--decorate-refs-exclude or if it doesn't match any of the <pattern>
parameters given to --decorate-refs. The log.excludeDecoration config
option allows excluding refs from the decorations, but an explicit
--decorate-refs pattern will override a match in
log.excludeDecoration.
If none of these options or config settings are given, then
references are used as decoration if they match HEAD, refs/heads/,
refs/remotes/, refs/stash/, or refs/tags/.
--clear-decorations
When specified, this option clears all previous --decorate-refs or
--decorate-refs-exclude options and relaxes the default decoration
filter to include all references. This option is assumed if the
config value log.initialDecorationSet is set to all.
--source
Print out the ref name given on the command line by which each commit
was reached.
--mailmap, --no-mailmap, --use-mailmap, --no-use-mailmap
Use mailmap file to map author and committer names and email
addresses to canonical real names and email addresses. See git-
shortlog(1).
--full-diff
Without this flag, git log -p <path>... shows commits that touch the
specified paths, and diffs about the same specified paths. With this,
the full diff is shown for commits that touch the specified paths;
this means that "<path>..." limits only commits, and doesn't limit
diff for those commits.
Note that this affects all diff-based output types, e.g. those
produced by --stat, etc.
--log-size
Include a line log size <number> in the output for each commit, where
<number> is the length of that commit's message in bytes. Intended to
speed up tools that read log messages from git log output by allowing
them to allocate space in advance.
-L<start>,<end>:<file>, -L:<funcname>:<file>
Trace the evolution of the line range given by <start>,<end>, or by
the function name regex <funcname>, within the <file>. You may not
give any pathspec limiters. This is currently limited to a walk
starting from a single revision, i.e., you may only give zero or one
positive revision arguments, and <start> and <end> (or <funcname>)
must exist in the starting revision. You can specify this option more
than once. Implies --patch. Patch output can be suppressed using
--no-patch. Non-patch diff formats --raw, --name-only, --name-status,
and --summary are supported. Diff stat formats (--stat, --numstat,
--shortstat, --dirstat) are not currently implemented.
Patch formatting options such as --word-diff, --color-moved,
--no-prefix, and whitespace options (-w, -b) are supported, as are
pickaxe options (-S, -G) and --diff-filter.
<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. The function names are determined in the same way as
git diff works out patch hunk headers (see Defining a custom
hunk-header in gitattributes(5)).
<revision-range>
Show only commits in the specified revision range. When no
<revision-range> is specified, it defaults to HEAD (i.e. the whole
history leading to the current commit). origin..HEAD specifies all
the commits reachable from the current commit (i.e. HEAD), but not
from origin. For a complete list of ways to spell <revision-range>,
see the Specifying Ranges section of gitrevisions(7).
[--] <path>...
Show only commits that are enough to explain how the files that match
the specified paths came to be. See History Simplification below for
details and other simplification modes.
Paths may need to be prefixed with -- to separate them from options
or the revision range, when confusion arises.
Commit Limiting
Besides specifying a range of commits that should be listed using the
special notations explained in the description, additional commit
limiting may be applied.
Using more options generally further limits the output (e.g.
--since=<date1> limits to commits newer than <date1>, and using it with
--grep=<pattern> further limits to commits whose log message has a line
that matches <pattern>), unless otherwise noted.
Note that these are applied before commit ordering and formatting
options, such as --reverse.
-<number>, -n <number>, --max-count=<number>
Limit the output to the first <number> commits that would be shown.
--max-count-oldest=<number>
Limit the output to the last <number> commits that would be shown.
--skip=<number>
Skip <number> commits before starting to show the commit output.
--since=<date>, --after=<date>
Show commits more recent than <date>. As a special case, today means
the last midnight.
--since-as-filter=<date>
Show all commits more recent than <date>. This visits all commits in
the range, rather than stopping at the first commit which is older
than <date>.
--until=<date>, --before=<date>
Show commits older than <date>.
--author=<pattern>, --committer=<pattern>
Limit the commits output to ones with author/committer header lines
that match the <pattern> regular expression. With more than one
--author=<pattern>, commits whose author matches any of the <pattern>
are chosen (similarly for multiple --committer=<pattern>).
--grep-reflog=<pattern>
Limit the commits output to ones with reflog entries that match the
<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 a log message that matches the
<pattern> regular expression. With more than one --grep=<pattern>,
commits whose message matches any of the <pattern> 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 a 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
When finding commits to include, follow only the first parent commit
upon seeing a merge commit. This option can give a better overview
when viewing the evolution of a particular topic branch, because
merges into a topic branch tend to be only about adjusting to updated
upstream from time to time, and this option allows you to ignore the
individual commits brought in to your history by such a merge.
This option also changes default diff format for merge commits to
first-parent, see --diff-merges=first-parent for details.
--exclude-first-parent-only
When finding commits to exclude (with a ^), follow only the first
parent commit upon seeing a merge commit. This can be used to find
the set of changes in a topic branch from the point where it diverged
from the remote branch, given that arbitrary merges can be valid
topic branch changes.
--maximal-only
Restrict the output commits to be those that are not reachable from
any other commits in the revision range.
--not
Reverses the meaning of the ^ prefix (or lack thereof) for all
following revision specifiers, up to the next --not. When used on the
command line before --stdin, the revisions passed through stdin will
not be affected by it. Conversely, when passed via standard input,
the revisions passed on the command line will not be affected by it.
--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.
--exclude-hidden=(fetch|receive|uploadpack)
Do not include refs that would be hidden by git-fetch,
git-receive-pack or git-upload-pack by consulting the appropriate
fetch.hideRefs, receive.hideRefs or uploadpack.hideRefs configuration
along with transfer.hideRefs (see git-config(1)). This option affects
the next pseudo-ref option --all or --glob and is cleared after
processing them.
--reflog
Pretend as if all objects mentioned by reflogs are listed on the
command line as <commit>.
--alternate-refs
Pretend as if all objects mentioned as ref tips of alternate
repositories were listed on the command line. An alternate repository
is any repository whose object directory is specified in
objects/info/alternates. The set of included objects may be modified
by core.alternateRefsCommand, etc. See git-config(1).
--single-worktree
By default, all working trees will be examined by the following
options when there are more than one (see git-worktree(1)): --all,
--reflog and --indexed-objects. This option forces them to examine
the current working tree only.
--ignore-missing
Upon seeing an invalid object name in the input, pretend as if the
bad input was not given.
--bisect
Pretend as if the bad bisection ref refs/bisect/bad was listed and as
if it was followed by --not and the good bisection refs
refs/bisect/good-* on the command line.
--stdin
In addition to getting arguments from the command line, read them
from standard input as well. This accepts commits and pseudo-options
like --all and --glob=. When a -- separator is seen, the following
input is treated as paths and used to limit the result. Flags like
--not which are read via standard input are only respected for
arguments passed in the same way and will not influence any
subsequent command line arguments.
--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
Show commits touching conflicted paths in the range HEAD...<other>,
where <other> is the first existing pseudoref in MERGE_HEAD,
CHERRY_PICK_HEAD, REVERT_HEAD or REBASE_HEAD. Only works when the
index has unmerged entries. This option can be used to show relevant
commits when resolving conflicts from a 3-way merge.
--boundary
Output excluded boundary commits. Boundary commits are prefixed with
-.
History Simplification
Sometimes you are only interested in parts of the history, for example
the commits modifying a particular <path>. But there are two parts of
History Simplification, one part is selecting the commits and the other
is how to do it, as there are various strategies to simplify the history.
The following options select the commits to be shown:
<paths>
Commits modifying the given <paths> are selected.
--simplify-by-decoration
Commits that are referred by some branch or tag are selected.
Note that extra commits can be shown to give a meaningful history.
The following options affect the way the simplification is performed:
Default mode
Simplifies the history to the simplest history explaining the final
state of the tree. Simplest because it prunes some side branches if
the end result is the same (i.e. merging branches with the same
content)
--show-pulls
Include all commits from the default mode, but also any merge commits
that are not TREESAME to the first parent but are TREESAME to a later
parent. This mode is helpful for showing the merge commits that
"first introduced" a change to a branch.
--full-history
Same as the default mode, but does not prune some history.
--dense
Only the selected commits are shown, plus some to have a meaningful
history.
--sparse
All commits in the simplified history are shown.
--simplify-merges
Additional option to --full-history to remove some needless merges
from the resulting history, as there are no selected commits
contributing to this merge.
--ancestry-path[=<commit>]
When given a range of commits to display (e.g. <commit1>..<commit2>
or <commit2> ^<commit1>), and a commit <commit> in that range, only
display commits in that range that are ancestors of <commit>,
descendants of <commit>, or <commit> itself. If no commit is
specified, use <commit1> (the excluded part of the range) as
<commit>. Can be passed multiple times; if so, a commit is included
if it is any of the commits given or if it is an ancestor or
descendant of one of them.
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.
There is another simplification mode available:
--ancestry-path[=<commit>]
Limit the displayed commits to those which are an ancestor of
<commit>, or which are a descendant of <commit>, or are <commit>
itself.
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
We can also use --ancestry-path=D instead of --ancestry-path which
means the same thing when applied to the D..M range but is just more
explicit.
If we instead are interested in a given topic within this range, and
all commits affected by that topic, we may only want to view the
subset of D..M which contain that topic in their ancestry path. So,
using --ancestry-path=H D..M for example would result in:
E
\
C---G---H---I---J
\
L--M
Whereas --ancestry-path=K D..M would result in
K---------------L--M
Before discussing another option, --show-pulls, we need to create a new
example history.
A common problem users face when looking at simplified history is that a
commit they know changed a file somehow does not appear in the file's
simplified history. Let's demonstrate a new example and show how options
such as --full-history and --simplify-merges works in that case:
.-A---M-----C--N---O---P
/ / \ \ \/ / /
I B \ R-'`-Z' /
\ / \/ /
\ / /\ /
`---X--' `---Y--'
For this example, suppose I created file.txt which was modified by A, B,
and X in different ways. The single-parent commits C, Z, and Y do not
change file.txt. The merge commit M was created by resolving the merge
conflict to include both changes from A and B and hence is not TREESAME
to either. The merge commit R, however, was created by ignoring the
contents of file.txt at M and taking only the contents of file.txt at X.
Hence, R is TREESAME to X but not M. Finally, the natural merge
resolution to create N is to take the contents of file.txt at R, so N is
TREESAME to R but not C. The merge commits O and P are TREESAME to their
first parents, but not to their second parents, Z and Y respectively.
When using the default mode, N and R both have a TREESAME parent, so
those edges are walked and the others are ignored. The resulting history
graph is:
I---X
When using --full-history, Git walks every edge. This will discover the
commits A and B and the merge M, but also will reveal the merge commits O
and P. With parent rewriting, the resulting graph is:
.-A---M--------N---O---P
/ / \ \ \/ / /
I B \ R-'`--' /
\ / \/ /
\ / /\ /
`---X--' `------'
Here, the merge commits O and P contribute extra noise, as they did not
actually contribute a change to file.txt. They only merged a topic that
was based on an older version of file.txt. This is a common issue in
repositories using a workflow where many contributors work in parallel
and merge their topic branches along a single trunk: many unrelated
merges appear in the --full-history results.
When using the --simplify-merges option, the commits O and P disappear
from the results. This is because the rewritten second parents of O and P
are reachable from their first parents. Those edges are removed and then
the commits look like single-parent commits that are TREESAME to their
parent. This also happens to the commit N, resulting in a history view as
follows:
.-A---M--.
/ / \
I B R
\ / /
\ / /
`---X--'
In this view, we see all of the important single-parent changes from A,
B, and X. We also see the carefully-resolved merge M and the
not-so-carefully-resolved merge R. This is usually enough information to
determine why the commits A and B "disappeared" from history in the
default view. However, there are a few issues with this approach.
The first issue is performance. Unlike any previous option, the
--simplify-merges option requires walking the entire commit history
before returning a single result. This can make the option difficult to
use for very large repositories.
The second issue is one of auditing. When many contributors are working
on the same repository, it is important which merge commits introduced a
change into an important branch. The problematic merge R above is not
likely to be the merge commit that was used to merge into an important
branch. Instead, the merge N was used to merge R and X into the important
branch. This commit may have information about why the change X came to
override the changes from A and B in its commit message.
--show-pulls
In addition to the commits shown in the default history, show each
merge commit that is not TREESAME to its first parent but is TREESAME
to a later parent.
When a merge commit is included by --show-pulls, the merge is treated
as if it "pulled" the change from another branch. When using
--show-pulls on this example (and no other options) the resulting
graph is:
I---X---R---N
Here, the merge commits R and N are included because they pulled the
commits X and R into the base branch, respectively. These merges are
the reason the commits A and B do not appear in the default history.
When --show-pulls is paired with --simplify-merges, the graph
includes all of the necessary information:
.-A---M--. N
/ / \ /
I B R
\ / /
\ / /
`---X--'
Notice that since M is reachable from R, the edge from N to M was
simplified away. However, N still appears in the history as an
important commit because it "pulled" the change R into the main
branch.
The --simplify-by-decoration option allows you to view only the big
picture of the topology of the history, by omitting commits that are not
referenced by tags. Commits are marked as !TREESAME (in other words, kept
after history simplification rules described above) if (1) they are
referenced by tags, or (2) they change the contents of the paths given on
the command line. All other commits are marked as TREESAME (subject to be
simplified away).
Commit Ordering
By default, the commits are shown in reverse chronological order.
--date-order
Show no parents before all of its children are shown, but otherwise
show commits in the commit timestamp order.
--author-date-order
Show no parents before all of its children are shown, but otherwise
show commits in the author timestamp order.
--topo-order
Show no parents before all of its children are shown, and avoid
showing commits on multiple lines of history intermixed.
For example, in a commit history like this:
---1----2----4----7
\ \
3----5----6----8---
where the numbers denote the order of commit timestamps, git rev-list
and friends with --date-order show the commits in the timestamp
order: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1.
With --topo-order, they would show 8 6 5 3 7 4 2 1 (or 8 7 4 2 6 5 3
1); some older commits are shown before newer ones in order to avoid
showing the commits from two parallel development track mixed
together.
--reverse
Output the commits chosen to be shown (see Commit Limiting section
above) in reverse order. Cannot be combined with --walk-reflogs.
Object Traversal
These options are mostly targeted for packing of Git repositories.
--no-walk[=(sorted|unsorted)]
Only show the given commits, but do not traverse their ancestors.
This has no effect if a range is specified. If the argument unsorted
is given, the commits are shown in the order they were given on the
command line. Otherwise (if sorted or no argument was given), the
commits are shown in reverse chronological order by commit time.
Cannot be combined with --graph.
--do-walk
Overrides a previous --no-walk.
Commit Formatting
--pretty[=<format>], --format=<format>
Pretty-print the contents of the commit logs in a given format, where
<format> can be one of oneline, short, medium, full, fuller,
reference, email, raw, format:<string> and tformat:<string>. When
<format> is none of the above, and has %<placeholder> in it, it acts
as if --pretty=tformat:<format> were given.
See the "PRETTY FORMATS" section for some additional details for each
format. When =<format> part is omitted, it defaults to medium.
Note
you can specify the default pretty format in the repository
configuration (see git-config(1)).
--abbrev-commit
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name,
show a prefix that names the object uniquely. --abbrev=<n> (which
also modifies diff output, if it is displayed) option can be used to
specify the minimum length of the prefix.
This should make --pretty=oneline a whole lot more readable for
people using 80-column terminals.
--no-abbrev-commit
Show the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name. This negates
--abbrev-commit, either explicit or implied by other options such as
--oneline. It also overrides the log.abbrevCommit variable.
--oneline
This is a shorthand for --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit used
together.
--encoding=<encoding>
Commit objects record the character encoding used for the log message
in their encoding header; this option can be used to tell the command
to re-code the commit log message in the encoding preferred by the
user. For non plumbing commands this defaults to UTF-8. Note that if
an object claims to be encoded in X and we are outputting in X, we
will output the object verbatim; this means that invalid sequences in
the original commit may be copied to the output. Likewise, if
iconv(3) fails to convert the commit, we will quietly output the
original object verbatim.
--expand-tabs=<n>, --expand-tabs, --no-expand-tabs
Perform a tab expansion (replace each tab with enough spaces to fill
to the next display column that is a 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 the 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-by-default
Show the default notes unless options for displaying specific notes
are given.
--show-notes[=<ref>], --standard-notes, --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:<format> feeds the <format> to your system strftime,
except for %s, %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(3) manual for a complete list of format
placeholders. When using -local, the correct syntax is
--date=format-local:<format>.
--date=default is the default format, and is based on ctime(3)
output. It shows a single line with three-letter day of the week,
three-letter month, day-of-month, hour-minute-seconds in "HH:MM:SS"
format, followed by 4-digit year, plus timezone information, unless
the local time zone is used, e.g. Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 +0000.
--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.
--graph-lane-limit=<n>
When --graph is used, limit the number of graph lanes to be shown.
Lanes over the limit are replaced with a truncation mark ~. By
default it is set to 0 (no limit), zero and negative values are
ignored and treated as no limit.
--no-graph-indent, --graph-indent
When used with --graph, indent visual roots (commits with no parents
or whose parents are not shown) to differentiate them from commits
that are vertically adjacent but unrelated. Enabled by default. Use
--no-graph-indent to disable or set log.graphIndent to set a default
preference.
PRETTY FORMATS
If the commit is a merge, and if the pretty-format is not oneline, email
or raw, an additional line is inserted before the Author: line. This line
begins with "Merge: " and the hashes of ancestral commits are printed,
separated by spaces. Note that the listed commits may not necessarily be
the list of the direct parent commits if you have limited your view of
history: for example, if you are only interested in changes related to a
certain directory or file.
There are several built-in formats, and you can define additional formats
by setting a pretty.<name> config option to either another format name,
or a format: string, as described below (see git-config(1)). Here are the
details of the built-in formats:
oneline
<hash> <title-line>
This is designed to be as compact as possible.
short
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
<title-line>
medium
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
Date: <author-date>
<title-line>
<full-commit-message>
full
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
Commit: <committer>
<title-line>
<full-commit-message>
fuller
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
AuthorDate: <author-date>
Commit: <committer>
CommitDate: <committer-date>
<title-line>
<full-commit-message>
reference
<abbrev-hash> (<title-line>, <short-author-date>)
This format is used to refer to another commit in a commit message
and is the same as --pretty='format:%C(auto)%h (%s, %ad)'. By
default, the date is formatted with --date=short unless another
--date option is explicitly specified. As with any format: with
format placeholders, its output is not affected by other options like
--decorate and --walk-reflogs.
email
From <hash> <date>
From: <author>
Date: <author-date>
Subject: [PATCH] <title-line>
<full-commit-message>
mboxrd
Like email, but lines in the commit message starting with "From "
(preceded by zero or more ">") are quoted with ">" so they aren't
confused as starting a new commit.
raw
The raw format shows the entire commit exactly as stored in the
commit object. Notably, the hashes are displayed in full, regardless
of whether --abbrev or --no-abbrev are used, and parents information
show the true parent commits, without taking grafts or history
simplification into account. Note that this format affects the way
commits are displayed, but not the way the diff is shown e.g. with
git log --raw. To get full object names in a raw diff format, use
--no-abbrev.
format:<format-string>
The format:<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
%x followed by two hexadecimal digits is replaced with a byte
with the hexadecimal digits' value (we will call this
"literal formatting code" in the rest of this document).
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(<spec>)
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,<spec>) is accepted as a historical synonym for the
default (e.g., %C(auto,red)). Specifying %C(always,<spec>)
will show the colors even when color is not otherwise enabled
(though consider just using --color=always to enable color
for the whole output, including this format and anything else
git might color). auto alone (i.e. %C(auto)) will turn on
auto coloring on the next placeholders until the color is
switched again.
%m
left (<), right (>) or boundary (-) mark
%w([<w>[,<i1>[,<i2>]]])
switch line wrapping, like the -w option of git-shortlog(1).
%<(<n>[,(trunc|ltrunc|mtrunc)])
make the next placeholder take at least N column widths,
padding spaces on the right if necessary. Optionally truncate
(with ellipsis ..) at the left (ltrunc) ..ft, the middle
(mtrunc) mi..le, or the end (trunc) rig.., if the output is
longer than <n> columns. Note 1: that truncating only works
correctly with <n> >= 2. Note 2: spaces around the <n> and
<m> (see below) values are optional. Note 3: Emojis and other
wide characters will take two display columns, which may
over-run column boundaries. Note 4: decomposed character
combining marks may be misplaced at padding boundaries.
%<|(<m> )
make the next placeholder take at least until <m> th display
column, padding spaces on the right if necessary. Use
negative <m> values for column positions measured from the
right hand edge of the terminal window.
%>(<n>), %>|(<m>)
similar to %<(<n>), %<|(<m>) respectively, but padding spaces
on the left
%>>(<n>), %>>|(<m>)
similar to %>(<n>), %>|(<m>) respectively, except that if the
next placeholder takes more spaces than given and there are
spaces on its left, use those spaces
%><(<n>), %><|(<m>)
similar to %<(<n>), %<|(<m>) respectively, but padding both
sides (i.e. the text is centered)
o Placeholders that expand to information extracted from the
commit:
%H
commit hash
%h
abbreviated commit hash
%T
tree hash
%t
abbreviated tree hash
%P
parent hashes
%p
abbreviated parent hashes
%an
author name
%aN
author name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-
blame(1))
%ae
author email
%aE
author email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or
git-blame(1))
%al
author email local-part (the part before the @ sign)
%aL
author local-part (see %al) respecting .mailmap, see git-
shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%ad
author date (format respects --date= option)
%aD
author date, RFC2822 style
%ar
author date, relative
%at
author date, UNIX timestamp
%ai
author date, ISO 8601-like format
%aI
author date, strict ISO 8601 format
%as
author date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)
%ah
author date, human style (like the --date=human option of
git-rev-list(1))
%cn
committer name
%cN
committer name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or
git-blame(1))
%ce
committer email
%cE
committer email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or
git-blame(1))
%cl
committer email local-part (the part before the @ sign)
%cL
committer local-part (see %cl) respecting .mailmap, see git-
shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%cd
committer date (format respects --date= option)
%cD
committer date, RFC2822 style
%cr
committer date, relative
%ct
committer date, UNIX timestamp
%ci
committer date, ISO 8601-like format
%cI
committer date, strict ISO 8601 format
%cs
committer date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)
%ch
committer date, human style (like the --date=human option of
git-rev-list(1))
%d
ref names, like the --decorate option of git-log(1)
%D
ref names without the " (", ")" wrapping.
%(count)
the number of a patch within a patch series. Used only in
--commit-list-format in format-patch
%(total)
the total number of patches in a patch series. Used only in
--commit-list-format in format-patch
%(decorate[:<option>,...])
ref names with custom decorations. The decorate string may be
followed by a colon and zero or more comma-separated options.
Option values may contain literal formatting codes. These
must be used for commas (%x2C) and closing parentheses
(%x29), due to their role in the option syntax.
prefix=<value>
Shown before the list of ref names. Defaults to " (".
suffix=<value>
Shown after the list of ref names. Defaults to ")".
separator=<value>
Shown between ref names. Defaults to ", ".
pointer=<value>
Shown between HEAD and the branch it points to, if any.
Defaults to " -> ".
tag=<value>
Shown before tag names. Defaults to "tag: ".
For example, to produce decorations with no wrapping or tag
annotations, and spaces as separators:
%(decorate:prefix=,suffix=,tag=,separator= )
%(describe[:<option>,...])
human-readable name, like git-describe(1); empty string for
undescribable commits. The describe string may be followed by
a colon and zero or more comma-separated options.
Descriptions can be inconsistent when tags are added or
removed at the same time.
tags[=<bool-value>]
Instead of only considering annotated tags, consider
lightweight tags as well.
abbrev=<number>
Instead of using the default number of hexadecimal digits
(which will vary according to the number of objects in
the repository with a default of 7) of the abbreviated
object name, use <number> digits, or as many digits as
needed to form a unique object name.
match=<pattern>
Only consider tags matching the given glob(7) <pattern>,
excluding the refs/tags/ prefix.
exclude=<pattern>
Do not consider tags matching the given glob(7)
<pattern>, excluding the refs/tags/ prefix.
%S
ref name given on the command line by which the commit was
reached (like git log --source), only works with git log
%e
encoding
%s
subject
%f
sanitized subject line, suitable for a filename
%b
body
%B
raw body (unwrapped subject and body)
%N
commit notes
%GG
raw verification message from GPG for a signed commit
%G?
show "G" for a good (valid) signature, "B" for a bad
signature, "U" for a good signature with unknown validity,
"X" for a good signature that has expired, "Y" for a good
signature made by an expired key, "R" for a good signature
made by a revoked key, "E" if the signature cannot be checked
(e.g. missing key) and "N" for no signature
%GS
show the name of the signer for a signed commit
%GK
show the key used to sign a signed commit
%GF
show the fingerprint of the key used to sign a signed commit
%GP
show the fingerprint of the primary key whose subkey was used
to sign a signed commit
%GT
show the trust level for the key used to sign a signed commit
%gD
reflog selector, e.g., refs/stash@{1} or refs/stash@{2
minutes ago}; the format follows the rules described for the
-g option. The portion before the @ is the refname as given
on the command line (so git log -g refs/heads/master would
yield refs/heads/master@{0}).
%gd
shortened reflog selector; same as %gD, but the refname
portion is shortened for human readability (so
refs/heads/master becomes just master).
%gn
reflog identity name
%gN
reflog identity name (respecting .mailmap, see git-
shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%ge
reflog identity email
%gE
reflog identity email (respecting .mailmap, see git-
shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%gs
reflog subject
%(trailers[:<option>,...])
display the trailers of the body as interpreted by git-
interpret-trailers(1). The trailers string may be followed by
a colon and zero or more comma-separated options. If any
option is provided multiple times, the last occurrence wins.
key=<key>
only show trailers with specified <key>. Matching is done
case-insensitively and trailing colon is optional. If
option is given multiple times trailer lines matching any
of the keys are shown. This option automatically enables
the only option so that non-trailer lines in the trailer
block are hidden. If that is not desired it can be
disabled with only=false. E.g.,
%(trailers:key=Reviewed-by) shows trailer lines with key
Reviewed-by.
only[=<bool>]
select whether non-trailer lines from the trailer block
should be included.
separator=<sep>
specify the separator inserted between trailer lines.
Defaults to a line feed character. The string <sep> may
contain the literal formatting codes described above. To
use comma as separator one must use %x2C as it would
otherwise be parsed as next option. E.g.,
%(trailers:key=Ticket,separator=%x2C ) shows all trailer
lines whose key is Ticket separated by a comma and a
space.
unfold[=<bool>]
make it behave as if interpret-trailer's --unfold option
was given. E.g., %(trailers:only,unfold=true) unfolds and
shows all trailer lines.
keyonly[=<bool>]
only show the key part of the trailer.
valueonly[=<bool>]
only show the value part of the trailer.
key_value_separator=<sep>
specify the separator inserted between the key and value
of each trailer. Defaults to ": ". Otherwise it shares
the same semantics as separator=<sep> above.
Note
Some placeholders may depend on other options given to the
revision traversal engine. For example, the %g* reflog
options will insert an empty string unless we are traversing
reflog entries (e.g., by git log -g). The %d and %D
placeholders will use the "short" decoration format if
--decorate was not already provided on the command line.
The boolean options accept an optional value [=<bool-value>]. The
values taken by --type=bool git-config(1), like yes and off, are
all accepted. Giving a boolean option without =<value> is
equivalent to giving it with =true.
If you add a + (plus sign) after % of a placeholder, a line-feed
is inserted immediately before the expansion if and only if the
placeholder expands to a non-empty string.
If you add a - (minus sign) after % of a placeholder, all
consecutive line-feeds immediately preceding the expansion are
deleted if and only if the placeholder expands to an empty
string.
If you add a ' ' (space) after % of a placeholder, a space is
inserted immediately before the expansion if and only if the
placeholder expands to a non-empty string.
tformat:
The tformat: format works exactly like format:, except that it
provides "terminator" semantics instead of "separator" semantics. In
other words, each commit has the message terminator character
(usually a newline) appended, rather than a separator placed between
entries. This means that the final entry of a single-line format will
be properly terminated with a new line, just as the "oneline" format
does. For example:
$ git log -2 --pretty=format:%h 4da45bef \
| perl -pe '$_ .= " -- NO NEWLINE\n" unless /\n/'
4da45be
7134973 -- NO NEWLINE
$ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef \
| perl -pe '$_ .= " -- NO NEWLINE\n" unless /\n/'
4da45be
7134973
In addition, any unrecognized string that has a % in it is
interpreted as if it has tformat: in front of it. For example, these
two are equivalent:
$ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef
$ git log -2 --pretty=%h 4da45bef
DIFF FORMATTING
By default, git log does not generate any diff output. The options below
can be used to show the changes made by each commit.
Note that unless one of --diff-merges variants (including short -m, -c,
--cc, and --dd options) is explicitly given, merge commits will not show
a diff, even if a diff format like --patch is selected, nor will they
match search options like -S. The exception is when --first-parent is in
use, in which case first-parent is the default format for merge commits.
-p, -u, --patch
Generate patch (see the section called "GENERATING PATCH TEXT WITH
-P").
-s, --no-patch
Suppress all output from the diff machinery. Useful for commands like
git show that show the patch by default to squelch their output, or
to cancel the effect of options like --patch, --stat earlier on the
command line in an alias.
-m
Show diffs for merge commits in the default format. This is similar
to --diff-merges=on, except -m will produce no output unless -p is
given as well.
-c
Produce combined diff output for merge commits. Shortcut for
--diff-merges=combined -p.
--cc
Produce dense combined diff output for merge commits. Shortcut for
--diff-merges=dense-combined -p.
--dd
Produce diff with respect to first parent for both merge and regular
commits. Shortcut for --diff-merges=first-parent -p.
--remerge-diff
Produce remerge-diff output for merge commits. Shortcut for
--diff-merges=remerge -p.
--no-diff-merges
Synonym for --diff-merges=off.
--diff-merges=<format>
Specify diff format to be used for merge commits. Default is `off`
unless --first-parent is in use, in which case first-parent is the
default.
The following formats are supported:
off, none
Disable output of diffs for merge commits. Useful to override
implied value.
on, m
Make diff output for merge commits to be shown in the default
format. The default format can be changed using log.diffMerges
configuration variable, whose default value is separate.
first-parent, 1
Show full diff with respect to first parent. This is the same
format as --patch produces for non-merge commits.
separate
Show full diff with respect to each of parents. Separate log
entry and diff is generated for each parent.
combined, c
Show 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.
dense-combined, cc
Further compress output produced by --diff-merges=combined by
omitting uninteresting hunks whose contents in the parents have
only two variants and the merge result picks one of them without
modification.
remerge, r
Remerge two-parent merge commits to create a temporary tree
object--potentially containing files with conflict markers and
such. A diff is then shown between that temporary tree and the
actual merge commit.
The output emitted when this option is used is subject to change, and
so is its interaction with other options (unless explicitly
documented).
--combined-all-paths
Cause combined diffs (used for merge commits) to list the name of the
file from all parents. It thus only has effect when
--diff-merges=[dense-]combined is in use, and is likely only useful
if filename changes are detected (i.e. when either rename or copy
detection have been requested).
-U<n>, --unified=<n>
Generate diffs with <n> lines of context. The number of context lines
defaults to diff.context or 3 if the configuration variable is unset.
(-U without <n> is silently accepted as a synonym for -p due to a
historical accident). Implies --patch.
--output=<file>
Output to a specific file instead of stdout.
--output-indicator-new=<char>, --output-indicator-old=<char>,
--output-indicator-context=<char>
Specify the character used to indicate new, old or context lines in
the generated patch. Normally they are +, - and ' ' respectively.
--raw
For each commit, show a summary of changes using the raw diff format.
See the "RAW OUTPUT FORMAT" section of git-diff(1). This is different
from showing the log itself in raw format, which you can achieve with
--format=raw.
--patch-with-raw
Synonym for -p --raw.
-t
Show the tree objects in the diff output.
--indent-heuristic
Enable the heuristic that shifts diff hunk boundaries to make patches
easier to read. This is the default.
--no-indent-heuristic
Disable the indent heuristic.
--minimal
Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced.
--patience
Generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.
--histogram
Generate a diff using the "histogram diff" algorithm.
--anchored=<text>
Generate a diff using the "anchored diff" algorithm.
This option may be specified more than once.
If a line exists in both the source and destination, exists only
once, and starts with <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 or by setting diff.statNameWidth=<name-width>. The width of the
graph part can be limited by using --stat-graph-width=<graph-width>
or by setting diff.statGraphWidth=<graph-width>. Using --stat or
--stat-graph-width affects all commands generating a stat graph,
while setting diff.statNameWidth or diff.statGraphWidth 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 [<param>,...], --dirstat[=<param>,...]
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[=<param>,...]
Synonym for --dirstat=files,<param>,....
--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 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 the name of each changed file in the post-image tree. The
file names are often encoded in UTF-8. For more information see the
discussion about encoding in the git-log(1) manual page.
--name-status
Show only the name(s) and status of each changed file. See the
description of the --diff-filter option on what the status letters
mean. Just like --name-only the file names are often encoded in
UTF-8.
--submodule[=<format>]
Specify how differences in submodules are shown. When specifying
--submodule=short the short format is used. This format just shows
the names of the commits at the beginning and end of the range. When
--submodule or --submodule=log is specified, the log format is used.
This format lists the commits in the range like git-submodule(1)
summary does. When --submodule=diff is specified, the diff format is
used. This format shows an inline diff of the changes in the
submodule contents between the commit range. Defaults to
diff.submodule or the short format if the config option is unset.
--color[=<when>]
Show colored diff. --color (i.e. without =<when>) is the same as
--color=always. <when> can be one of always, never, or auto.
--no-color
Turn off colored diff. It is the same as --color=never.
--color-moved[=<mode>]
Moved lines of code are colored differently. The <mode> defaults to
no if the option is not given and to zebra if the option with no mode
is given. The mode must be one of:
no
Moved lines are not highlighted.
default
Is a synonym for zebra. This may change to a more sensible mode
in the future.
plain
Any line that is added in one location and was removed in another
location will be colored with color.diff.newMoved. Similarly
color.diff.oldMoved will be used for removed lines that are added
somewhere else in the diff. This mode picks up any moved line,
but it is not very useful in a review to determine if a block of
code was moved without permutation.
blocks
Blocks of moved text of at least 20 alphanumeric characters are
detected greedily. The detected blocks are painted using either
the color.diff.(old|new)Moved color. Adjacent blocks cannot be
told apart.
zebra
Blocks of moved text are detected as in blocks mode. The blocks
are painted using either the color.diff.(old|new)Moved color or
color.diff.(old|new)MovedAlternative. The change between the two
colors indicates that a new block was detected.
dimmed-zebra
Similar to zebra, but additional dimming of uninteresting parts
of moved code is performed. The bordering lines of two adjacent
blocks are considered interesting, the rest is uninteresting.
dimmed_zebra is a deprecated synonym.
--no-color-moved
Turn off move detection. This can be used to override configuration
settings. It is the same as --color-moved=no.
--color-moved-ws=<mode>,...
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>]
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.
The --word-diff option operates by taking the same line-by-line diff
that is produced without the option and computing word-by-word
changes within each hunk. This may produce a larger diff than a
dedicated word-diff tool would. If Git acquires a different
implementation in the future, the output may change. Note that this
is similar to the --diff-algorithm option, which may also change the
output.
--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.
--rename-empty, --no-rename-empty
Whether to use empty blobs as rename source.
--check
Warn if changes introduce conflict markers or whitespace errors. What
are considered whitespace errors is controlled by core.whitespace
configuration. By default, trailing whitespaces (including lines that
consist solely of whitespaces) and a space character that is
immediately followed by a tab character inside the initial indent of
the line are considered whitespace errors. Exits with non-zero status
if problems are found. Not compatible with --exit-code.
--ws-error-highlight=<kind>
Highlight whitespace errors in the context, old or new lines of the
diff. Multiple values are separated by comma, none resets previous
values, default reset the list to new and all is a shorthand for
old,new,context. When this option is not given, and the configuration
variable diff.wsErrorHighlight is not set, only whitespace errors in
new lines are highlighted. The whitespace errors are colored with
color.diff.whitespace.
--full-index
Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full pre- and
post-image blob object names on the "index" line when generating
patch format output.
--binary
In addition to --full-index, output a binary diff that can be applied
with git-apply. Implies --patch.
--abbrev[=<n>]
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name in
diff-raw format output and diff-tree header lines, show the shortest
prefix that is at least <n> hexdigits long that uniquely refers the
object. In diff-patch output format, --full-index takes higher
precedence, i.e. if --full-index is specified, full blob names will
be shown regardless of --abbrev. Non default number of digits can be
specified with --abbrev=<n>.
-B[<n>][/<m>], --break-rewrites[=[<n>][/<m>]]
Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create. This
serves two purposes:
It affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite of a file
not as a series of deletion and insertion mixed together with a very
few lines that happen to match textually as the context, but as a
single deletion of everything old followed by a single insertion of
everything new, and the number <m> controls this aspect of the -B
option (defaults to 60%). -B/70% specifies that less than 30% of the
original should remain in the result for Git to consider it a total
rewrite (i.e. otherwise the resulting patch will be a series of
deletion and insertion mixed together with context lines).
When used with -M, a totally-rewritten file is also considered as the
source of a rename (usually -M only considers a file that disappeared
as the source of a rename), and the number <n> controls this aspect
of the -B option (defaults to 50%). -B20% specifies that a change
with addition and deletion compared to 20% or more of the file's size
are eligible for being picked up as a possible source of a rename to
another file.
-M[<n>], --find-renames[=<n>]
If generating diffs, detect and report renames for each commit. For
following files across renames while traversing history, see
--follow. If <n> is specified, it is a threshold on the similarity
index (i.e. amount of addition/deletions compared to the file's
size). For example, -M90% means Git should consider a delete/add pair
to be a rename if more than 90% of the file hasn't changed. Without a
% sign, the number is to be read as a fraction, with a decimal point
before it. I.e., -M5 becomes 0.5, and is thus the same as -M50%.
Similarly, -M05 is the same as -M5%. To limit detection to exact
renames, use -M100%. The default similarity index is 50%.
-C[<n>], --find-copies[=<n>]
Detect copies as well as renames. See also --find-copies-harder. If
<n> is specified, it has the same meaning as for -M<n>.
--find-copies-harder
For performance reasons, by default, -C option finds copies only if
the original file of the copy was modified in the same changeset.
This flag makes the command inspect unmodified files as candidates
for the source of copy. This is a very expensive operation for large
projects, so use it with caution. Giving more than one -C option has
the same effect.
-D, --irreversible-delete
Omit the preimage for deletes, i.e. print only the header but not the
diff between the preimage and /dev/null. The resulting patch is not
meant to be applied with patch or git apply; this is solely for
people who want to just concentrate on reviewing the text after the
change. In addition, the output obviously lacks enough information to
apply such a patch in reverse, even manually, hence the name of the
option.
When used together with -B, omit also the preimage in the deletion
part of a delete/create pair.
-l<num>
The -M and -C options involve some preliminary steps that can detect
subsets of renames/copies cheaply, followed by an exhaustive fallback
portion that compares all remaining unpaired destinations to all
relevant sources. (For renames, only remaining unpaired sources are
relevant; for copies, all original sources are relevant.) For N
sources and destinations, this exhaustive check is O(N^2). This
option prevents the exhaustive portion of rename/copy detection from
running if the number of source/destination files involved exceeds
the specified number. Defaults to diff.renameLimit. Note that a value
of 0 is treated as unlimited.
--diff-filter=[(A|C|D|M|R|T|U|X|B)...[*]]
Select only files that are Added (A), Copied (C), Deleted (D),
Modified (M), Renamed (R), have their type (i.e. regular file,
symlink, submodule, ...) changed (T), are Unmerged (U), are Unknown
(X), or have had their pairing Broken (B). Any combination of the
filter characters (including none) can be used. When * (All-or-none)
is added to the combination, all paths are selected if there is any
file that matches other criteria in the comparison; if there is no
file that matches other criteria, nothing is selected.
Also, these upper-case letters can be downcased to exclude. E.g.
--diff-filter=ad excludes added and deleted paths.
Note that not all diffs can feature all types. For instance, 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".
--skip-to=<file>, --rotate-to=<file>
Discard the files before the named <file> from the output (i.e. skip
to), or move them to the end of the output (i.e. rotate to). These
options were invented primarily for the use of the git difftool
command, and may not be very useful otherwise.
-R
Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or on-disk file
to tree contents.
--relative[=<path>], --no-relative
When run from a subdirectory of the project, it can be told to
exclude changes outside the directory and show pathnames relative to
it with this option. When you are not in a subdirectory (e.g. in a
bare repository), you can name which subdirectory to make the output
relative to by giving a <path> as an argument. --no-relative can be
used to countermand both diff.relative config option and previous
--relative.
-a, --text
Treat all files as text.
--ignore-cr-at-eol
Ignore carriage-return at the end of line when doing a comparison.
--ignore-space-at-eol
Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
-b, --ignore-space-change
Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace at
line end, and considers all other sequences of one or more whitespace
characters to be equivalent.
-w, --ignore-all-space
Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences even
if one line has whitespace where the other line has none.
--ignore-blank-lines
Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.
-I<regex>, --ignore-matching-lines=<regex>
Ignore changes whose all lines match <regex>. This option may be
specified more than once.
--inter-hunk-context=<number>
Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified <number> of
lines, thereby fusing hunks that are close to each other. Defaults to
diff.interHunkContext or 0 if the config option is unset.
-W, --function-context
Show whole function as context lines for each change. The function
names are determined in the same way as git diff works out patch hunk
headers (see "Defining a custom hunk-header" in gitattributes(5)).
--ext-diff
Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set an external
diff driver with gitattributes(5), you need to use this option with
git-log(1) and friends.
--no-ext-diff
Disallow external diff drivers.
--textconv, --no-textconv
Allow (or disallow) external text conversion filters to be run when
comparing binary files. See gitattributes(5) for details. Because
textconv filters are typically a one-way conversion, the resulting
diff is suitable for human consumption, but cannot be applied. For
this reason, textconv filters are enabled by default only for git-
git-log(1), but not for git-format-patch(1) or diff
plumbing commands.
--ignore-submodules[=(none|untracked|dirty|all)]
Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation. all 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.
--default-prefix
Use the default source and destination prefixes ("a/" and "b/"). This
overrides configuration variables such as diff.noprefix,
diff.srcPrefix, diff.dstPrefix, and diff.mnemonicPrefix (see git-
config(1)).
--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.
--max-depth=<depth>
For each pathspec given on command line, descend at most <depth>
levels of directories. A value of -1 means no limit. Cannot be
combined with wildcards in the pathspec. Given a tree containing
foo/bar/baz, the following list shows the matches generated by each
set of options:
o --max-depth=0 -- foo: foo
o --max-depth=1 -- foo: foo/bar
o --max-depth=1 -- foo/bar: foo/bar/baz
o --max-depth=1 -- foo foo/bar: foo/bar/baz
o --max-depth=2 -- foo: foo/bar/baz
If no pathspec is given, the depth is measured as if all top-level
entries were specified. Note that this is different than measuring
from the root, in that --max-depth=0 would still return foo. This
allows you to still limit depth while asking for a subset of the
top-level entries.
Note that this option is only supported for diffs between tree
objects, not against the index or working tree.
For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also
gitdiffcore(7).
GENERATING PATCH TEXT WITH -P
Running git-log(1), git-show(1), git-diff-index(1), git-
diff-tree(1), or git-diff-files(1) with the -p option produces patch
text. You can customize the creation of patch text via the
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF and the GIT_DIFF_OPTS environment variables (see
git(1)), and the diff attribute (see gitattributes(5)).
What the -p option produces is slightly different from the traditional
diff format:
1. It is preceded by 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 a 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 the
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 <mode> are printed as 6-digit octal numbers including the
file type and file permission bits.
Path names in extended headers do not include the a/ and b/ prefixes.
The similarity index is the percentage of unchanged lines, and the
dissimilarity index is the percentage of changed lines. It is a
rounded down integer, followed by a percent sign. The similarity
index value of 100% is thus reserved for two equal files, while 100%
dissimilarity means that no line from the old file made it into the
new one.
The index line includes the blob object names before and after the
change. The <mode> is included if the file mode does not change;
otherwise, separate lines indicate the old and the new mode.
3. Pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted as explained for the
configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)).
4. All the file1 files in the output refer to files before the commit,
and all the file2 files refer to files after the commit. It is
incorrect to apply each change to each file sequentially. For
example, this patch will swap a and b:
diff --git a/a b/b
rename from a
rename to b
diff --git a/b b/a
rename from b
rename to a
5. Hunk headers mention the name of the function to which the hunk
applies. See "Defining a custom hunk-header" in gitattributes(5) for
details of how to tailor this to specific languages.
COMBINED DIFF FORMAT
Any diff-generating command can take the -c or --cc option to produce a
combined diff when showing a merge. This is the default format when
showing merges with git-diff(1) or git-show(1). Note also that you can
give suitable --diff-merges option to any of these commands to force
generation of diffs in a specific format.
A "combined diff" format looks like this:
diff --combined describe.c
index fabadb8,cc95eb0..4866510
--- a/describe.c
+++ b/describe.c
@@@ -98,20 -98,12 +98,20 @@@
return (a_date > b_date) ? -1 : (a_date == b_date) ? 0 : 1;
}
- static void describe(char *arg)
-static void describe(struct commit *cmit, int last_one)
++static void describe(char *arg, int last_one)
{
+ unsigned char sha1[20];
+ struct commit *cmit;
struct commit_list *list;
static int initialized = 0;
struct commit_name *n;
+ if (get_sha1(arg, sha1) < 0)
+ usage(describe_usage);
+ cmit = lookup_commit_reference(sha1);
+ if (!cmit)
+ usage(describe_usage);
+
if (!initialized) {
initialized = 1;
for_each_ref(get_name);
1. It is preceded by 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 content movement (renames and copying
detection) are designed to work with the diff of two <tree-ish> and
are not used by combined diff format.
3. It is followed by a two-line from-file/to-file header:
--- a/file
+++ b/file
Similar to the two-line header for the 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 an 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 issue 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 their 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.
Everything above this line in this section isn't included from the git-
config(1) documentation. The content that follows is the same as what's
found there:
log.abbrevCommit
If git-log(1), git-show(1), and git-whatchanged(1) assume
--abbrev-commit. You may override this option with
--no-abbrev-commit.
log.date
Set the default date-time mode for the log command. Setting a value
for log.date is similar to using git log's --date option. See git-
log(1) for details.
If the format is set to "auto:foo" and the pager is in use, format
"foo" will be used for the date format. Otherwise, "default" will be
used.
log.decorate
Print out the ref names of any commits that are shown by the log
command. Possible values are:
short
the ref name prefixes refs/heads/, refs/tags/ and refs/remotes/
are not printed.
full
the full ref name (including prefix) are printed.
auto
if the output is going to a terminal, the ref names are shown as
if short were given, otherwise no ref names are shown.
This is the same as the --decorate option of the git log.
log.initialDecorationSet
By default, git log only shows decorations for certain known ref
namespaces. If all is specified, then show all refs as decorations.
log.excludeDecoration
Exclude the specified patterns from the log decorations. This is
similar to the --decorate-refs-exclude command-line option, but the
config option can be overridden by the --decorate-refs option.
log.diffMerges
Set diff format to be used when --diff-merges=on is specified, see
git-log(1) for details. Defaults to separate.
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.
log.graphColors
A list of colors, separated by commas, that can be used to draw
history lines in git log --graph.
log.graphIndent
If true, indent visual roots when rendering the graphs with --graph.
Set true by default. It can be overriden with --[no-]graph-indent.
log.showRoot
If true, the initial commit will be shown as a big creation event.
This is equivalent to a diff against an empty tree. Tools like git-
log(1) or git-whatchanged(1), which normally hide the root commit
will now show it. True by default.
log.showSignature
If true, makes git-log(1), git-show(1), and git-whatchanged(1) assume
--show-signature.
log.mailmap
If true, makes git-log(1), git-show(1), and git-whatchanged(1) assume
--use-mailmap, otherwise assume --no-use-mailmap. True by default.
notes.mergeStrategy
Which merge strategy to choose by default when resolving notes
conflicts. Must be one of manual, ours, theirs, union, or
cat_sort_uniq. Defaults to manual. See the "NOTES MERGE STRATEGIES"
section of git-notes(1) for more information on each strategy.
This setting can be overridden by passing the --strategy option to
git-notes(1).
notes.<name>.mergeStrategy
Which merge strategy to choose when doing a notes merge into
refs/notes/<name>. This overrides the more general
notes.mergeStrategy. See the "NOTES MERGE STRATEGIES" section in git-
notes(1) for more information on the available strategies.
notes.displayRef
Which ref (or refs, if a glob or specified more than once), in
addition to the default set by core.notesRef or GIT_NOTES_REF, to
read notes from when showing commit messages with the git log family
of commands.
This setting can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_DISPLAY_REF
environment variable, which must be a colon separated list of refs or
globs.
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 to the git-
log(1) family of commands, or by the --notes=<ref> option accepted by
those commands.
The effective value of core.notesRef (possibly overridden by
GIT_NOTES_REF) is also implicitly added to the list of refs to be
displayed.
notes.rewrite.<command>
When rewriting commits with <command> (currently amend or rebase), if
this variable is false, git will not copy notes from the original to
the rewritten commit. Defaults to true. See also notes.rewriteRef
below.
This setting can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_REF
environment variable, which must be a colon separated list of refs or
globs.
notes.rewriteMode
When copying notes during a rewrite (see the notes.rewrite.<command>
option), determines what to do if the target commit already has a
note. Must be one of overwrite, concatenate, cat_sort_uniq, or
ignore. Defaults to concatenate.
This setting can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_MODE
environment variable.
notes.rewriteRef
When copying notes during a rewrite, specifies the (fully qualified)
ref whose notes should be copied. May be a glob, in which case notes
in all matching refs will be copied. You may also specify this
configuration several times.
Does not have a default value; you must configure this variable to
enable note rewriting. Set it to refs/notes/commits to enable
rewriting for the default commit notes.
Can be overridden with the GIT_NOTES_REWRITE_REF environment
variable. See notes.rewrite.<command> above for a further description
of its format.
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
Git 2.56.0 2026-09-27 git-log(1)
git 2.56.0 - Generated Thu Oct 1 16:25:58 CDT 2026