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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | PRETTY FORMATS | DIFF FORMATTING | GENERATING PATCH TEXT WITH -P | COMBINED DIFF FORMAT | EXAMPLES | DISCUSSION | CONFIGURATION | GIT | COLOPHON |
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GIT-LOG(1) Git Manual GIT-LOG(1)
git-log - Show commit logs
git log [<options>] [<revision-range>] [[--] <path>...]
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.
--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.
--[no-]mailmap, --[no-]use-mailmap
Use mailmap file to map author and committer names and email
addresses to canonical real names and email addresses. See
git-shortlog(1).
--full-diff
Without this flag, git log -p <path>... shows commits that
touch the specified paths, and diffs about the same specified
paths. With this, the full diff is shown for commits that
touch the specified paths; this means that "<path>..." limits
only commits, and doesn’t limit diff for those commits.
Note that this affects all diff-based output types, e.g. those
produced by --stat, etc.
--log-size
Include a line log size <number> in the output for each
commit, where <number> is the length of that commit’s message
in bytes. Intended to speed up tools that read log messages
from git log output by allowing them to allocate space in
advance.
-L<start>,<end>:<file>, -L:<funcname>:<file>
Trace the evolution of the line range given by <start>,<end>,
or by the function name regex <funcname>, within the <file>.
You may not give any pathspec limiters. This is currently
limited to a walk starting from a single revision, i.e., you
may only give zero or one positive revision arguments, and
<start> and <end> (or <funcname>) must exist in the starting
revision. You can specify this option more than once. Implies
--patch. Patch output can be suppressed using --no-patch, but
other diff formats (namely --raw, --numstat, --shortstat,
--dirstat, --summary, --name-only, --name-status, --check) are
not currently implemented.
<start> and <end> can take one of these forms:
• <number>
If <start> or <end> is a number, it specifies an absolute
line number (lines count from 1).
• /<regex>/
This form will use the first line matching the given POSIX
<regex>. If <start> is a regex, it will search from the
end of the previous -L range, if any, otherwise from the
start of file. If <start> is ^/<regex>/, it will search
from the start of file. If <end> is a regex, it will
search starting at the line given by <start>.
• +<offset> or -<offset>
This is only valid for <end> and will specify a number of
lines before or after the line given by <start>.
If :<funcname> is given in place of <start> and <end>, it is a
regular expression that denotes the range from the first
funcname line that matches <funcname>, up to the next funcname
line. :<funcname> searches from the end of the previous -L
range, if any, otherwise from the start of file. ^:<funcname>
searches from the start of file. The function names are
determined in the same way as git diff works out patch hunk
headers (see Defining a custom hunk-header in
gitattributes(5)).
<revision-range>
Show only commits in the specified revision range. When no
<revision-range> is specified, it defaults to HEAD (i.e. the
whole history leading to the current commit). origin..HEAD
specifies all the commits reachable from the current commit
(i.e. HEAD), but not from origin. For a complete list of ways
to spell <revision-range>, see the Specifying Ranges section
of gitrevisions(7).
[--] <path>...
Show only commits that are enough to explain how the files
that match the specified paths came to be. See History
Simplification below for details and other simplification
modes.
Paths may need to be prefixed with -- to separate them from
options or the revision range, when confusion arises.
Commit Limiting
Besides specifying a range of commits that should be listed using
the special notations explained in the description, additional
commit limiting may be applied.
Using more options generally further limits the output (e.g.
--since=<date1> limits to commits newer than <date1>, and using it
with --grep=<pattern> further limits to commits whose log message
has a line that matches <pattern>), unless otherwise noted.
Note that these are applied before commit ordering and formatting
options, such as --reverse.
-<number>, -n <number>, --max-count=<number>
Limit the output to <number> commits.
--skip=<number>
Skip <number> commits before starting to show the commit
output.
--since=<date>, --after=<date>
Show commits more recent than <date>.
--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.
--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:
• I is the initial commit, in which foo exists with contents
asdf, and a file quux exists with contents quux. Initial
commits are compared to an empty tree, so I is !TREESAME.
• In A, foo contains just foo.
• B contains the same change as A. Its merge M is trivial and
hence TREESAME to all parents.
• C does not change foo, but its merge N changes it to foobar,
so it is not TREESAME to any parent.
• D sets foo to baz. Its merge O combines the strings from N and
D to foobarbaz; i.e., it is not TREESAME to any parent.
• E changes quux to xyzzy, and its merge P combines the strings
to quux xyzzy. P is TREESAME to O, but not to E.
• X is an independent root commit that added a new file side,
and Y modified it. Y is TREESAME to X. Its merge Q added side
to P, and Q is TREESAME to P, but not to Y.
rev-list walks backwards through history, including or excluding
commits based on whether --full-history and/or parent rewriting
(via --parents or --children) are used. The following settings are
available.
Default mode
Commits are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent
(though this can be changed, see --sparse below). If the
commit was a merge, and it was TREESAME to one parent, follow
only that parent. (Even if there are several TREESAME parents,
follow only one of them.) Otherwise, follow all parents.
This results in:
.-A---N---O
/ / /
I---------D
Note how the rule to only follow the TREESAME parent, if one
is available, removed B from consideration entirely. C was
considered via N, but is TREESAME. Root commits are compared
to an empty tree, so I is !TREESAME.
Parent/child relations are only visible with --parents, but
that does not affect the commits selected in default mode, so
we have shown the parent lines.
--full-history without parent rewriting
This mode differs from the default in one point: always follow
all parents of a merge, even if it is TREESAME to one of them.
Even if more than one side of the merge has commits that are
included, this does not imply that the merge itself is! In the
example, we get
I A B N D O P Q
M was excluded because it is TREESAME to both parents. E, C
and B were all walked, but only B was !TREESAME, so the others
do not appear.
Note that without parent rewriting, it is not really possible
to talk about the parent/child relationships between the
commits, so we show them disconnected.
--full-history with parent rewriting
Ordinary commits are only included if they are !TREESAME
(though this can be changed, see --sparse below).
Merges are always included. However, their parent list is
rewritten: Along each parent, prune away commits that are not
included themselves. This results in
.-A---M---N---O---P---Q
/ / / / /
I B / D /
\ / / / /
`-------------'
Compare to --full-history without rewriting above. Note that E
was pruned away because it is TREESAME, but the parent list of
P was rewritten to contain E's parent I. The same happened for
C and N, and X, Y and Q.
In addition to the above settings, you can change whether TREESAME
affects inclusion:
--dense
Commits that are walked are included if they are not TREESAME
to any parent.
--sparse
All commits that are walked are included.
Note that without --full-history, this still simplifies
merges: if one of the parents is TREESAME, we follow only that
one, so the other sides of the merge are never walked.
--simplify-merges
First, build a history graph in the same way that
--full-history with parent rewriting does (see above).
Then simplify each commit C to its replacement C' in the final
history according to the following rules:
• Set C' to C.
• Replace each parent P of C' with its simplification P'. In
the process, drop parents that are ancestors of other
parents or that are root commits TREESAME to an empty
tree, and remove duplicates, but take care to never drop
all parents that we are TREESAME to.
• If after this parent rewriting, C' is a root or merge
commit (has zero or >1 parents), a boundary commit, or
!TREESAME, it remains. Otherwise, it is replaced with its
only parent.
The effect of this is best shown by way of comparing to
--full-history with parent rewriting. The example turns into:
.-A---M---N---O
/ / /
I B D
\ / /
`---------'
Note the major differences in N, P, and Q over --full-history:
• N's parent list had I removed, because it is an ancestor
of the other parent M. Still, N remained because it is
!TREESAME.
• P's parent list similarly had I removed. P was then
removed completely, because it had one parent and is
TREESAME.
• Q's parent list had Y simplified to X. X was then
removed, because it was a TREESAME root. Q was then
removed completely, because it had one parent and is
TREESAME.
There is another simplification mode available:
--ancestry-path[=<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:
• a space instead of the T date/time delimiter
• a space between time and time zone
• no colon between hours and minutes of the time zone
--date=iso-strict (or --date=iso8601-strict) shows timestamps
in strict ISO 8601 format.
--date=rfc (or --date=rfc2822) shows timestamps in RFC 2822
format, often found in email messages.
--date=short shows only the date, but not the time, in
YYYY-MM-DD format.
--date=raw shows the date as seconds since the epoch
(1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC), followed by a space, and then the
timezone as an offset from UTC (a + or - with four digits; the
first two are hours, and the second two are minutes). I.e., as
if the timestamp were formatted with strftime("%s %z")). Note
that the -local option does not affect the seconds-since-epoch
value (which is always measured in UTC), but does switch the
accompanying timezone value.
--date=human shows the timezone if the timezone does not match
the current time-zone, and doesn’t print the whole date if
that matches (ie skip printing year for dates that are "this
year", but also skip the whole date itself if it’s in the last
few days and we can just say what weekday it was). For older
dates the hour and minute is also omitted.
--date=unix shows the date as a Unix epoch timestamp (seconds
since 1970). As with --raw, this is always in UTC and
therefore -local has no effect.
--date=format:<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.
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:
• 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).
• 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)
• 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.
%(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
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 f
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 instead of the usual
three. Implies --patch.
--output=<file>
Output to a specific file instead of stdout.
--output-indicator-new=<char>, --output-indicator-old=<char>,
--output-indicator-context=<char>
Specify the character used to indicate new, old or context
lines in the generated patch. Normally they are +, - and ' '
respectively.
--raw
For each commit, show a summary of changes using the raw diff
format. See the "RAW OUTPUT FORMAT" section of git-diff(1).
This is different from showing the log itself in raw format,
which you can achieve with --format=raw.
--patch-with-raw
Synonym for -p --raw.
-t
Show the tree objects in the diff output.
--indent-heuristic
Enable the heuristic that shifts diff hunk boundaries to make
patches easier to read. This is the default.
--no-indent-heuristic
Disable the indent heuristic.
--minimal
Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is
produced.
--patience
Generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.
--histogram
Generate a diff using the "histogram diff" algorithm.
--anchored=<text>
Generate a diff using the "anchored diff" algorithm.
This option may be specified more than once.
If a line exists in both the source and destination, exists
only once, and starts with <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.
--word-diff-regex=<regex>
Use <regex> to decide what a word is, instead of considering
runs of non-whitespace to be a word. Also implies --word-diff
unless it was already enabled.
Every non-overlapping match of the <regex> is considered a
word. Anything between these matches is considered whitespace
and ignored(!) for the purposes of finding differences. You
may want to append |[^[:space:]] to your regular expression to
make sure that it matches all non-whitespace characters. A
match that contains a newline is silently truncated(!) at the
newline.
For example, --word-diff-regex=. will treat each character as
a word and, correspondingly, show differences character by
character.
The regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration
option, see gitattributes(5) or git-config(1). Giving it
explicitly overrides any diff driver or configuration setting.
Diff drivers override configuration settings.
--color-words[=<regex>]
Equivalent to --word-diff=color plus (if a regex was
specified) --word-diff-regex=<regex>.
--no-renames
Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration file
gives the default to do so.
--[no-]rename-empty
Whether to use empty blobs as rename source.
--check
Warn if changes introduce conflict markers or whitespace
errors. What are considered whitespace errors is controlled by
core.whitespace configuration. By default, trailing
whitespaces (including lines that consist solely of
whitespaces) and a space character that is immediately
followed by a tab character inside the initial indent of the
line are considered whitespace errors. Exits with non-zero
status if problems are found. Not compatible with --exit-code.
--ws-error-highlight=<kind>
Highlight whitespace errors in the context, old or new lines
of the diff. Multiple values are separated by comma, none
resets previous values, default reset the list to new and all
is a shorthand for old,new,context. When this option is not
given, and the configuration variable diff.wsErrorHighlight is
not set, only whitespace errors in new lines are highlighted.
The whitespace errors are colored with color.diff.whitespace.
--full-index
Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full pre-
and post-image blob object names on the "index" line when
generating patch format output.
--binary
In addition to --full-index, output a binary diff that can be
applied with git-apply. Implies --patch.
--abbrev[=<n>]
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name in
diff-raw format output and diff-tree header lines, show the
shortest prefix that is at least <n> hexdigits long that
uniquely refers the object. In diff-patch output format,
--full-index takes higher precedence, i.e. if --full-index is
specified, full blob names will be shown regardless of
--abbrev. Non default number of digits can be specified with
--abbrev=<n>.
-B[<n>][/<m>], --break-rewrites[=[<n>][/<m>]]
Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and
create. This serves two purposes:
It affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite of
a file not as a series of deletion and insertion mixed
together with a very few lines that happen to match textually
as the context, but as a single deletion of everything old
followed by a single insertion of everything new, and the
number <m> controls this aspect of the -B option (defaults to
60%). -B/70% specifies that less than 30% of the original
should remain in the result for Git to consider it a total
rewrite (i.e. otherwise the resulting patch will be a series
of deletion and insertion mixed together with context lines).
When used with -M, a totally-rewritten file is also considered
as the source of a rename (usually -M only considers a file
that disappeared as the source of a rename), and the number
<n> controls this aspect of the -B option (defaults to 50%).
-B20% specifies that a change with addition and deletion
compared to 20% or more of the file’s size are eligible for
being picked up as a possible source of a rename to another
file.
-M[<n>], --find-renames[=<n>]
If generating diffs, detect and report renames for each
commit. For following files across renames while traversing
history, see --follow. If <n> is specified, it is a threshold
on the similarity index (i.e. amount of addition/deletions
compared to the file’s size). For example, -M90% means Git
should consider a delete/add pair to be a rename if more than
90% of the file hasn’t changed. Without a % sign, the number
is to be read as a fraction, with a decimal point before it.
I.e., -M5 becomes 0.5, and is thus the same as -M50%.
Similarly, -M05 is the same as -M5%. To limit detection to
exact renames, use -M100%. The default similarity index is
50%.
-C[<n>], --find-copies[=<n>]
Detect copies as well as renames. See also
--find-copies-harder. If <n> is specified, it has the same
meaning as for -M<n>.
--find-copies-harder
For performance reasons, by default, -C option finds copies
only if the original file of the copy was modified in the same
changeset. This flag makes the command inspect unmodified
files as candidates for the source of copy. This is a very
expensive operation for large projects, so use it with
caution. Giving more than one -C option has the same effect.
-D, --irreversible-delete
Omit the preimage for deletes, i.e. print only the header but
not the diff between the preimage and /dev/null. The resulting
patch is not meant to be applied with patch or git apply; this
is solely for people who want to just concentrate on reviewing
the text after the change. In addition, the output obviously
lacks enough information to apply such a patch in reverse,
even manually, hence the name of the option.
When used together with -B, omit also the preimage in the
deletion part of a delete/create pair.
-l<num>
The -M and -C options involve some preliminary steps that can
detect subsets of renames/copies cheaply, followed by an
exhaustive fallback portion that compares all remaining
unpaired destinations to all relevant sources. (For renames,
only remaining unpaired sources are relevant; for copies, all
original sources are relevant.) For N sources and
destinations, this exhaustive check is O(N^2). This option
prevents the exhaustive portion of rename/copy detection from
running if the number of source/destination files involved
exceeds the specified number. Defaults to diff.renameLimit.
Note that a value of 0 is treated as unlimited.
--diff-filter=[(A|C|D|M|R|T|U|X|B)...[*]]
Select only files that are Added (A), Copied (C), Deleted (D),
Modified (M), Renamed (R), have their type (i.e. regular file,
symlink, submodule, ...) changed (T), are Unmerged (U), are
Unknown (X), or have had their pairing Broken (B). Any
combination of the filter characters (including none) can be
used. When * (All-or-none) is added to the combination, all
paths are selected if there is any file that matches other
criteria in the comparison; if there is no file that matches
other criteria, nothing is selected.
Also, these upper-case letters can be downcased to exclude.
E.g. --diff-filter=ad excludes added and deleted paths.
Note that not all diffs can feature all types. For instance,
copied and renamed entries cannot appear if detection for
those types is disabled.
-S<string>
Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of
the specified <string> (i.e. addition/deletion) in a file.
Intended for the scripter’s use.
It is useful when you’re looking for an exact block of code
(like a struct), and want to know the history of that block
since it first came into being: use the feature iteratively to
feed the interesting block in the preimage back into -S, and
keep going until you get the very first version of the block.
Binary files are searched as well.
-G<regex>
Look for differences whose patch text contains added/removed
lines that match <regex>.
To illustrate the difference between -S<regex> --pickaxe-regex
and -G<regex>, consider a commit with the following diff in
the same file:
+ return frotz(nitfol, two->ptr, 1, 0);
...
- hit = frotz(nitfol, mf2.ptr, 1, 0);
While git log -G"frotz\(nitfol" will show this commit, git log
-S"frotz\(nitfol" --pickaxe-regex will not (because the number
of occurrences of that string did not change).
Unless --text is supplied patches of binary files without a
textconv filter will be ignored.
See the pickaxe entry in gitdiffcore(7) for more information.
--find-object=<object-id>
Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of
the specified object. Similar to -S, just the argument is
different in that it doesn’t search for a specific string but
for a specific object id.
The object can be a blob or a submodule commit. It implies the
-t option in git-log to also find trees.
--pickaxe-all
When -S or -G finds a change, show all the changes in that
changeset, not just the files that contain the change in
<string>.
--pickaxe-regex
Treat the <string> given to -S as an extended POSIX regular
expression to match.
-O<orderfile>
Control the order in which files appear in the output. This
overrides the diff.orderFile configuration variable (see
git-config(1)). To cancel diff.orderFile, use -O/dev/null.
The output order is determined by the order of glob patterns
in <orderfile>. All files with pathnames that match the first
pattern are output first, all files with pathnames that match
the second pattern (but not the first) are output next, and so
on. All files with pathnames that do not match any pattern are
output last, as if there was an implicit match-all pattern at
the end of the file. If multiple pathnames have the same rank
(they match the same pattern but no earlier patterns), their
output order relative to each other is the normal order.
<orderfile> is parsed as follows:
• Blank lines are ignored, so they can be used as separators
for readability.
• Lines starting with a hash ("#") are ignored, so they can
be used for comments. Add a backslash ("\") to the
beginning of the pattern if it starts with a hash.
• Each other line contains a single pattern.
Patterns have the same syntax and semantics as patterns used
for fnmatch(3) without the FNM_PATHNAME flag, except a
pathname also matches a pattern if removing any number of the
final pathname components matches the pattern. For example,
the pattern "foo*bar" matches "fooasdfbar" and
"foo/bar/baz/asdf" but not "foobarx".
--skip-to=<file>, --rotate-to=<file>
Discard the files before the named <file> from the output
(i.e. skip to), or move them to the end of the output (i.e.
rotate to). These 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-diff(1) and 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.
For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also
gitdiffcore(7).
Running git-diff(1), git-log(1), git-show(1), git-diff-index(1),
git-diff-tree(1), or git-diff-files(1) with the -p option produces
patch text. You can customize the creation of patch text via the
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF and the GIT_DIFF_OPTS environment variables (see
git(1)), and the diff attribute (see gitattributes(5)).
What the -p option produces is slightly different from the
traditional diff format:
1. It is preceded 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.
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").
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.
Git is to some extent character encoding agnostic.
• The contents of the blob objects are uninterpreted sequences
of bytes. There is no encoding translation at the core level.
• Path names are encoded in UTF-8 normalization form C. This
applies to tree objects, the index file, ref names, as well as
path names in command line arguments, environment variables
and config files (.git/config (see git-config(1)),
gitignore(5), gitattributes(5) and gitmodules(5)).
Note that Git at the core level treats path names simply as
sequences of non-NUL bytes, there are no path name encoding
conversions (except on Mac and Windows). Therefore, using
non-ASCII path names will mostly work even on platforms and
file systems that use legacy extended ASCII encodings.
However, repositories created on such systems will not work
properly on UTF-8-based systems (e.g. Linux, Mac, Windows) and
vice versa. Additionally, many Git-based tools simply assume
path names to be UTF-8 and will fail to display other
encodings correctly.
• Commit log messages are typically encoded in UTF-8, but other
extended ASCII encodings are also supported. This includes
ISO-8859-x, CP125x and many others, but not UTF-16/32, EBCDIC
and CJK multi-byte encodings (GBK, Shift-JIS, Big5, EUC-x,
CP9xx etc.).
Although we encourage that the commit log messages are encoded in
UTF-8, both the core and Git Porcelain are designed not to force
UTF-8 on projects. If all participants of a particular project
find it more convenient to use legacy encodings, Git does not
forbid it. However, there are a few things to keep in mind.
1. git commit and git commit-tree 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.
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 true, make 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 --diff-merges in 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
and does not work well on non-linear history.
log.graphColors
A list of colors, separated by commas, that can be used to
draw history lines in git log --graph.
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.
Part of the git(1) suite
This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
system) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual
page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2025-08-07.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
[email protected]
Git 2.51.0.rc1 2025-08-07 GIT-LOG(1)
Pages that refer to this page: git(1), git-annotate(1), git-blame(1), git-bundle(1), git-config(1), git-diff(1), git-diff-files(1), git-diff-index(1), git-diff-pairs(1), git-diff-tree(1), git-fetch(1), git-for-each-ref(1), git-format-patch(1), gitk(1), git-log(1), git-notes(1), git-range-diff(1), git-rebase(1), git-receive-pack(1), git-reflog(1), git-revert(1), git-rev-list(1), git-shortlog(1), git-show(1), git-stash(1), git-whatchanged(1), gitattributes(5), gitweb.conf(5), gitdiffcore(7), giteveryday(7), gitrevisions(7)
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