git-log - Man Page

• Show the sequence of commits starting from the current one, in reverse chronological order of the Git repository in the current working directory: git log
• Show the history of a particular file or directory, including differences: git log -p|-u|--patch path/to/file_or_directory
• Show an overview of which file(s) changed in each commit: git log --stat
• Show a graph of commits in the current branch using only the first line of each commit message: git log --oneline --graph
• Show a graph of all commits, tags and branches in the entire repo: git log --oneline --decorate --all --graph
• Show only commits with messages that include a specific string, ignoring case: git log -i|--regexp-ignore-case --grep search_string
• Show the last N number of commits from a certain author: git log -n|--max-count number --author "author"
• Show commits between two dates (yyyy-mm-dd): git log --before "2017-01-29" --after "2017-01-17"

tldr.sh

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. 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 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 patterns given to --decorate-refs-exclude or if it doesn’t match any of the patterns 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.

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

          .-A---M-----C--N---O---P
         /     / \  \  \/   /   /
        I     B   \  R-'`-Z'   /
         \   /     \/         /
          \ /      /\        /
           `---X--'  `---Y--'

        I---X

          .-A---M--------N---O---P
         /     / \  \  \/   /   /
        I     B   \  R-'`--'   /
         \   /     \/         /
          \ /      /\        /
           `---X--'  `------'

          .-A---M--.
         /     /    \
        I     B      R
         \   /      /
          \ /      /
           `---X--'

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.

The boolean options accept an optional value [=<bool-value>]. The values true, false, on, off etc. are all accepted. See the "boolean" sub-section in "Examples" in git-config(1). If a boolean option is given with no value, it’s enabled.

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 `off` unless --first-parent is in use, in which case first-parent is the default.

The following formats are supported:

off, none

Disable output of diffs for merge commits. Useful to override implied value.

on, m

Make diff output for merge commits to be shown in the default format. The default format can be changed using log.diffMerges configuration variable, whose default value is separate.

first-parent, 1

Show full diff with respect to first parent. This is the same format as --patch produces for non-merge commits.

separate

Show full diff with respect to each of parents. Separate log entry and diff is generated for each parent.

combined, c

Show differences from each of the parents to the merge result simultaneously instead of showing pairwise diff between a parent and the result one at a time. Furthermore, it lists only files which were modified from all parents.

dense-combined, cc

Further compress output produced by --diff-merges=combined by omitting uninteresting hunks whose contents in the parents have only two variants and the merge result picks one of them without modification.

remerge, r

Remerge two-parent merge commits to create a temporary tree object—potentially containing files with conflict markers and such. A diff is then shown between that temporary tree and the actual merge commit.

The output emitted when this option is used is subject to change, and so is its interaction with other options (unless explicitly documented).

--combined-all-paths

This flag causes combined diffs (used for merge commits) to list the name of the file from all parents. It thus only has effect when --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 this text, this algorithm attempts to prevent it from appearing as a deletion or addition in the output. It uses the "patience diff" algorithm internally.

--diff-algorithm={patience|minimal|histogram|myers}

Choose a diff algorithm. The variants are as follows:

default, myers

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

minimal

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

patience

Use "patience diff" algorithm when generating patches.

histogram

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

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

--stat[=<width>[,<name-width>[,<count>]]]

Generate a diffstat. By default, as much space as necessary will be used for the filename part, and the rest for the graph part. Maximum width defaults to terminal width, or 80 columns if not connected to a terminal, and can be overridden by <width>. The width of the filename part can be limited by giving another width <name-width> after a comma or by setting diff.statNameWidth=<width>. The width of the graph part can be limited by using --stat-graph-width=<width> or by setting diff.statGraphWidth=<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[<param1,param2,...>], --dirstat[=<param1,param2,...>]

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

changes

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

lines

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

files

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

cumulative

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

<limit>

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

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

--cumulative

Synonym for --dirstat=cumulative

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

Synonym for --dirstat=files,<param1>,<param2>...

--summary

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

--patch-with-stat

Synonym for -p --stat.

-z

Separate the commits with NULs instead of 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=<modes>

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

no

Do not ignore whitespace when performing move detection.

ignore-space-at-eol

Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.

ignore-space-change

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

ignore-all-space

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

allow-indentation-change

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

--no-color-moved-ws

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

--word-diff[=<mode>]

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

color

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

plain

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

porcelain

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

none

Disable word diff again.

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

--word-diff-regex=<regex>

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

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

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

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

--color-words[=<regex>]

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

--no-renames

Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration file gives the default to do so.

--[no-]rename-empty

Whether to use empty blobs as rename source.

--check

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

--ws-error-highlight=<kind>

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

--full-index

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

--binary

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

--abbrev[=<n>]

Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name in diff-raw format output and diff-tree header lines, show 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=<lines>

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

-W,  --function-context

Show whole 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[=<when>]

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

--src-prefix=<prefix>

Show the given source prefix instead of "a/".

--dst-prefix=<prefix>

Show the given destination prefix instead of "b/".

--no-prefix

Do not show any source or destination prefix.

--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 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, makes 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. 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. 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 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

dgit-maint-debrebase(7), git(1), git-annotate(1), gitattributes(5), git-blame(1), git-bundle(1), git-config(1), git-dag(1), git-diff(1), gitdiffcore(7), git-diff-files(1), git-diff-index(1), git-diff-tree(1), giteveryday(7), git-fetch(1), git-for-each-ref(1), git-format-patch(1), gitk(1), git-range-diff(1), git-rebase(1), git-receive-pack(1), git-reflog(1), git-remote-hg(1), git-restore-mtime(1), git-revert(1), gitrevisions(7), git-rev-list(1), git-shortlog(1), git-show(1), git-stash(1), gitweb.conf(5), git-whatchanged(1), hub-ci-status(1), hub-issue(1), hub-pr(1), hub-release(1), public-inbox-index(1), tig(1), tigmanual(7), tigrc(5), tito.props(5).