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2.51.0
2025-08-18
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2.2.3
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2.1.4
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2.0.5
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DESCRIPTION
Shows the commit logs.
List commits that are reachable by following the parent
links from the
given commit(s), but exclude commits that are reachable from the one(s)
given with a ^ in front of them. The output is given in reverse
chronological order by default.
You can think of this as a set operation. Commits reachable from any of the commits given on the command line form a set, and then commits reachable from any of the ones given with ^ in front are subtracted from that set. The remaining commits are what comes out in the command’s output. Various other options and paths parameters can be used to further limit the result.
Thus, the following command:
$ git log foo bar ^baz
means "list all the commits which are reachable from foo or bar, but not from baz".
A special notation "<commit1>..<commit2>" can be used as a short-hand for "^<commit1> <commit2>". For example, either of the following may be used interchangeably:
$ git log origin..HEAD $ git log HEAD ^origin
Another special notation is "<commit1>…<commit2>" which is useful for merges. The resulting set of commits is the symmetric difference between the two operands. The following two commands are equivalent:
$ git log A B --not $(git merge-base --all A B) $ git log A...B
The command takes options applicable to the git-rev-list[1] command to control what is shown and how, and options applicable to the git-diff[1] command to control how the changes each commit introduces are shown.
OPTIONS
- --follow
-
Continue listing the history of a file beyond renames (works only for a single file).
- --no-decorate
- --decorate[=short|full|auto|no]
-
Print out the ref names of any commits that are shown. If short is specified, the ref name prefixes refs/heads/, refs/tags/ and refs/remotes/ will not be printed. If full is specified, the full ref name (including prefix) will be printed. If auto is specified, then if the output is going to a terminal, the ref names are shown as if short were given, otherwise no ref names are shown. The option
--decorate
is short-hand for--decorate=short
. Default to configuration value oflog.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 patterns given to
--decorate-refs-exclude
or if it doesn’t match any of the patterns given to--decorate-refs
. Thelog.excludeDecoration
config option allows excluding refs from the decorations, but an explicit--decorate-refs
pattern will override a match inlog.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/
, orrefs/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 valuelog.initialDecorationSet
is set toall
. - --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 asgit
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 fromorigin
. For a complete list of ways to spell <revision-range>, see the Specifying Ranges section of gitrevisions[7]. - [--] <path>…
-
Show only commits that are enough to explain how the files that match the specified paths came to be. See History Simplification below for details and other simplification modes.
Paths may need to be prefixed with
--
to separate them from options or the revision range, when confusion arises.
Commit Limiting
Besides specifying a range of commits that should be listed using the special notations explained in the description, additional commit limiting may be applied.
Using more options generally further limits the output (e.g.
--since=
<date1> limits to commits newer than <date1>, and using it
with --grep=
<pattern> further limits to commits whose log message
has a line that matches <pattern>), unless otherwise noted.
Note that these are applied before commit
ordering and formatting options, such as --reverse
.
- -<number>
- -n <number>
- --max-count=<number>
-
Limit the number of commits to output.
- --skip=<number>
-
Skip number commits before starting to show the commit output.
- --since=<date>
- --after=<date>
-
Show commits more recent than a specific date.
- --since-as-filter=<date>
-
Show all commits more recent than a specific date. This visits all commits in the range, rather than stopping at the first commit which is older than a specific date.
- --until=<date>
- --before=<date>
-
Show commits older than a specific date.
- --author=<pattern>
- --committer=<pattern>
-
Limit the commits output to ones with author/committer header lines that match the specified pattern (regular expression). With more than one
--author=
<pattern>, commits whose author matches any of the given patterns are chosen (similarly for multiple--committer=
<pattern>). - --grep-reflog=<pattern>
-
Limit the commits output to ones with reflog entries that match the specified pattern (regular expression). With more than one
--grep-reflog
, commits whose reflog message matches any of the given patterns are chosen. It is an error to use this option unless--walk-reflogs
is in use. - --grep=<pattern>
-
Limit the commits output to ones with a log message that matches the specified pattern (regular expression). With more than one
--grep=
<pattern>, commits whose message matches any of the given patterns are chosen (but see--all-match
).When
--notes
is in effect, the message from the notes is matched as if it were part of the log message. - --all-match
-
Limit the commits output to ones that match all given
--grep
, instead of ones that match at least one. - --invert-grep
-
Limit the commits output to ones with 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 withHEAD
, 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
, orrefs/remotes
when applied to--branches
,--tags
, or--remotes
, respectively, and they must begin withrefs/
when applied to--glob
or--all
. If a trailing /* is intended, it must be given explicitly. -
Do not include refs that would be hidden by
git-fetch
,git-receive-pack
orgit-upload-pack
by consulting the appropriatefetch.hideRefs
,receive.hideRefs
oruploadpack.hideRefs
configuration along withtransfer.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 bycore.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 refsrefs/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
andB
, a usual way to list all commits on only one side of them is with--left-right
(see the example below in the description of the--left-right
option). However, it shows the commits that were cherry-picked from the other branch (for example, “3rd on b” may be cherry-picked from branch A). With this option, such pairs of commits are excluded from the output. - --left-only
- --right-only
-
List only commits on the respective side of a symmetric difference, i.e. only those which would be marked < resp. > by
--left-right
.For example,
--cherry-pick
--right-only
A...B
omits those commits fromB
which are inA
or are patch-equivalent to a commit inA
. In other words, this lists the+
commits fromgit
cherry
A
B
. More precisely,--cherry-pick
--right-only
--no-merges
gives the exact list. - --cherry
-
A synonym for
--right-only
--cherry-mark
--no-merges
; useful to limit the output to the commits on our side and mark those that have been applied to the other side of a forked history withgit
log
--cherry
upstream...mybranch
, similar togit
cherry
upstream
mybranch
. - -g
- --walk-reflogs
-
Instead of walking the commit ancestry chain, walk reflog entries from the most recent one to older ones. When this option is used you cannot specify commits to exclude (that is, ^commit, commit1..commit2, and commit1...commit2 notations cannot be used).
With
--pretty
format other thanoneline
andreference
(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 asref@{Nth}
(whereNth
is the reverse-chronological index in the reflog) or asref@{timestamp}
(with the timestamp for that entry), depending on a few rules:-
If the starting point is specified as
ref@{Nth}
, show the index format. -
If the starting point was specified as
ref@{now}
, show the timestamp format. -
If neither was used, but
--date
was given on the command line, show the timestamp in the format requested by--date
. -
Otherwise, show the index format.
Under
--pretty=oneline
, the commit message is prefixed with this information on the same line. This option cannot be combined with--reverse
. See also git-reflog[1].Under
--pretty=reference
, this information will not be shown at all. -
- --merge
-
After a failed merge, show refs that touch files having a conflict and don’t exist on all heads to merge.
- --boundary
-
Output excluded boundary commits. Boundary commits are prefixed with
-
.
History Simplification
Sometimes you are only interested in parts of the history, for example the commits modifying a particular <path>. But there are two parts of History Simplification, one part is selecting the commits and the other is how to do it, as there are various strategies to simplify the history.
The following options select the commits to be shown:
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), 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 whichfoo
exists with contents “asdf”, and a filequux
exists with contents “quux”. Initial commits are compared to an empty tree, soI
is !TREESAME. -
In
A
,foo
contains just “foo”. -
B
contains the same change asA
. Its mergeM
is trivial and hence TREESAME to all parents. -
C
does not changefoo
, but its mergeN
changes it to “foobar”, so it is not TREESAME to any parent. -
D
setsfoo
to “baz”. Its mergeO
combines the strings fromN
andD
to “foobarbaz”; i.e., it is not TREESAME to any parent. -
E
changesquux
to “xyzzy”, and its mergeP
combines the strings to “quux xyzzy”.P
is TREESAME toO
, but not toE
. -
X
is an independent root commit that added a new fileside
, andY
modified it.Y
is TREESAME toX
. Its mergeQ
addedside
toP
, andQ
is TREESAME toP
, but not toY
.
rev-list
walks backwards through history, including or excluding
commits based on whether --full-history
and/or parent rewriting
(via --parents
or --children
) are used. The following settings
are available.
- Default mode
-
Commits are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent (though this can be changed, see
--sparse
below). If the commit was a merge, and it was TREESAME to one parent, follow only that parent. (Even if there are several TREESAME parents, follow only one of them.) Otherwise, follow all parents.This results in:
.-A---N---O / / / I---------D
Note how the rule to only follow the TREESAME parent, if one is available, removed
B
from consideration entirely.C
was considered viaN
, but is TREESAME. Root commits are compared to an empty tree, soI
is !TREESAME.Parent/child relations are only visible with
--parents
, but that does not affect the commits selected in default mode, so we have shown the parent lines. - --full-history without parent rewriting
-
This mode differs from the default in one point: always follow all parents of a merge, even if it is TREESAME to one of them. Even if more than one side of the merge has commits that are included, this does not imply that the merge itself is! In the example, we get
I A B N D O P Q
M
was excluded because it is TREESAME to both parents.E
,C
andB
were all walked, but onlyB
was !TREESAME, so the others do not appear.Note that without parent rewriting, it is not really possible to talk about the parent/child relationships between the commits, so we show them disconnected.
- --full-history with parent rewriting
-
Ordinary commits are only included if they are !TREESAME (though this can be changed, see
--sparse
below).Merges are always included. However, their parent list is rewritten: Along each parent, prune away commits that are not included themselves. This results in
.-A---M---N---O---P---Q / / / / / I B / D / \ / / / / `-------------'
Compare to
--full-history
without rewriting above. Note thatE
was pruned away because it is TREESAME, but the parent list of P was rewritten to containE
's parentI
. The same happened forC
andN
, andX
,Y
andQ
.
In addition to the above settings, you can change whether TREESAME affects inclusion:
- --dense
-
Commits that are walked are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent.
- --sparse
-
All commits that are walked are included.
Note that without
--full-history
, this still simplifies merges: if one of the parents is TREESAME, we follow only that one, so the other sides of the merge are never walked. - --simplify-merges
-
First, build a history graph in the same way that
--full-history
with parent rewriting does (see above).Then simplify each commit
C
to its replacementC'
in the final history according to the following rules:-
Set
C'
toC
. -
Replace each parent
P
ofC'
with its simplificationP'
. In the process, drop parents that are ancestors of other parents or that are root commits TREESAME to an empty tree, and remove duplicates, but take care to never drop all parents that we are TREESAME to. -
If after this parent rewriting,
C'
is a root or merge commit (has zero or >1 parents), a boundary commit, or !TREESAME, it remains. Otherwise, it is replaced with its only parent.
The effect of this is best shown by way of comparing to
--full-history
with parent rewriting. The example turns into:.-A---M---N---O / / / I B D \ / / `---------'
Note the major differences in
N
,P
, andQ
over--full-history
:-
N
's parent list hadI
removed, because it is an ancestor of the other parentM
. Still,N
remained because it is !TREESAME. -
P
's parent list similarly hadI
removed.P
was then removed completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME. -
Q
's parent list hadY
simplified toX
.X
was then removed, because it was a TREESAME root.Q
was then removed completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME.
-
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 ofD
. This is useful to see what happened to the history leading toM
sinceD
, in the sense that “what doesM
have that did not exist inD
”. The result in this example would be all the commits, exceptA
andB
(andD
itself, of course).When we want to find out what commits in
M
are contaminated with the bug introduced byD
and need fixing, however, we might want to view only the subset of D..M that are actually descendants ofD
, i.e. excludingC
andK
. This is exactly what the--ancestry-path
option does. Applied to the D..M range, it results in:E-------F \ \ G---H---I---J \ L--M
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 \ G---H---I---J \ L--M
Whereas
--ancestry-path=K
D..M
would result inK---------------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
andN
are included because they pulled the commitsX
andR
into the base branch, respectively. These merges are the reason the commitsA
andB
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 fromR
, the edge fromN
toM
was simplified away. However,N
still appears in the history as an important commit because it "pulled" the changeR
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 (ifsorted
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 thelog.abbrevCommit
variable. - --oneline
-
This is a shorthand for "--pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit" used together.