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. Note that they are applied before commit ordering and formatting options, such as '--reverse'. -- -n 'number':: --max-count=:: Limit the number of commits to output. --skip=:: Skip 'number' commits before starting to show the commit output. --since=:: --after=:: Show commits more recent than a specific date. --until=:: --before=:: Show commits older than a specific date. ifdef::git-rev-list[] --max-age=:: --min-age=:: Limit the commits output to specified time range. endif::git-rev-list[] --author=:: --committer=:: Limit the commits output to ones with author/committer header lines that match the specified pattern (regular expression). --grep=:: Limit the commits output to ones with log message that matches the specified pattern (regular expression). --all-match:: Limit the commits output to ones that match all given --grep, --author and --committer instead of ones that match at least one. -i:: --regexp-ignore-case:: Match the regexp limiting patterns without regard to letters case. -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). --remove-empty:: Stop when a given path disappears from the tree. --merges:: Print only merge commits. --no-merges:: Do not print commits with more than one parent. --first-parent:: Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit. This option can give a better overview when viewing the evolution of a particular topic branch, because merges into a topic branch tend to be only about adjusting to updated upstream from time to time, and this option allows you to ignore the individual commits brought in to your history by such a merge. --not:: Reverses the meaning of the '{caret}' prefix (or lack thereof) for all following revision specifiers, up to the next '--not'. --all:: Pretend as if all the refs in `refs/` are listed on the command line as ''. --branches[=]:: Pretend as if all the refs in `refs/heads` are listed on the command line as ''. If '' is given, limit branches to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks '?', '*', or '[', '/*' at the end is implied. --tags[=]:: Pretend as if all the refs in `refs/tags` are listed on the command line as ''. If '' is given, limit tags to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks '?', '*', or '[', '/*' at the end is implied. --remotes[=]:: Pretend as if all the refs in `refs/remotes` are listed on the command line as ''. If '' is given, limit remote-tracking branches to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks '?', '*', or '[', '/*' at the end is implied. --glob=:: Pretend as if all the refs matching shell glob '' are listed on the command line as ''. Leading 'refs/', is automatically prepended if missing. If pattern lacks '?', '*', or '[', '/*' at the end is implied. ifndef::git-rev-list[] --bisect:: Pretend as if the bad bisection ref `refs/bisect/bad` was listed and as if it was followed by `--not` and the good bisection refs `refs/bisect/good-*` on the command line. endif::git-rev-list[] --stdin:: In addition to the '' listed on the command line, read them from the standard input. If a '--' separator is seen, stop reading commits and start reading paths to limit the result. ifdef::git-rev-list[] --quiet:: Don't print anything to standard output. This form is primarily meant to allow the caller to test the exit status to see if a range of objects is fully connected (or not). It is faster than redirecting stdout to /dev/null as the output does not have to be formatted. endif::git-rev-list[] --cherry-pick:: Omit any commit that introduces the same change as another commit on the "other side" when the set of commits are limited with symmetric difference. + For example, if you have two branches, `A` and `B`, a usual way to list all commits on only one side of them is with `--left-right`, like the example above in the description of that option. It however 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. -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, '{caret}commit', 'commit1..commit2', nor 'commit1\...commit2' notations cannot be used). + With '\--pretty' format other than oneline (for obvious reasons), this causes the output to have two extra lines of information taken from the reflog. By default, 'commit@\{Nth}' notation is used in the output. When the starting commit is specified as 'commit@\{now}', output also uses 'commit@\{timestamp}' notation instead. Under '\--pretty=oneline', the commit message is prefixed with this information on the same line. This option cannot be combined with '\--reverse'. See also linkgit:git-reflog[1]. --merge:: After a failed merge, show refs that touch files having a conflict and don't exist on all heads to merge. --boundary:: Output uninteresting commits at the boundary, which are usually not shown. -- History Simplification ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sometimes you are only interested in parts of the history, for example the commits modifying a particular . 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: :: Commits modifying the given are selected. --simplify-by-decoration:: Commits that are referred by some branch or tag are selected. Note that extra commits can be shown to give a meaningful history. The following options affect the way the simplification is performed: Default mode:: Simplifies the history to the simplest history explaining the final state of the tree. Simplest because it prunes some side branches if the end result is the same (i.e. merging branches with the same content) --full-history:: As the default mode but does not prune some history. --dense:: Only the selected commits are shown, plus some to have a meaningful history. --sparse:: All commits in the simplified history are shown. --simplify-merges:: Additional option to '--full-history' to remove some needless merges from the resulting history, as there are no selected commits contributing to this merge. --ancestry-path:: When given a range of commits to display (e.g. 'commit1..commit2' or 'commit2 {caret}commit1'), only display commits that exist directly on the ancestry chain between the 'commit1' and 'commit2', i.e. commits that are both descendants of 'commit1', and ancestors of 'commit2'. A more detailed explanation follows. Suppose you specified `foo` as the . 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 / / / / / I B C D E \ / / / / `-------------' ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The horizontal line of history A--P is taken to be the first parent of each merge. The commits are: * `I` is the initial commit, in which `foo` exists with contents "asdf", and a file `quux` exists with contents "quux". Initial commits are compared to an empty tree, so `I` is !TREESAME. * In `A`, `foo` contains just "foo". * `B` contains the same change as `A`. Its merge `M` is trivial and hence TREESAME to all parents. * `C` does not change `foo`, but its merge `N` changes it to "foobar", so it is not TREESAME to any parent. * `D` sets `foo` to "baz". Its merge `O` combines the strings from `N` and `D` to "foobarbaz"; i.e., it is not TREESAME to any parent. * `E` changes `quux` to "xyzzy", and its merge `P` combines the strings to "quux xyzzy". Despite appearing interesting, `P` is TREESAME to all parents. 'rev-list' walks backwards through history, including or excluding commits based on whether '\--full-history' and/or parent rewriting (via '\--parents' or '\--children') are used. The following settings are available. Default mode:: Commits are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent (though this can be changed, see '\--sparse' below). If the commit was a merge, and it was TREESAME to one parent, follow only that parent. (Even if there are several TREESAME parents, follow only one of them.) Otherwise, follow all parents. + This results in: + ----------------------------------------------------------------------- .-A---N---O / / / I---------D ----------------------------------------------------------------------- + Note how the rule to only follow the TREESAME parent, if one is available, removed `B` from consideration entirely. `C` was considered via `N`, but is TREESAME. Root commits are compared to an empty tree, so `I` is !TREESAME. + Parent/child relations are only visible with --parents, but that does not affect the commits selected in default mode, so we have shown the parent lines. --full-history without parent rewriting:: This mode differs from the default in one point: always follow all parents of a merge, even if it is TREESAME to one of them. Even if more than one side of the merge has commits that are included, this does not imply that the merge itself is! In the example, we get + ----------------------------------------------------------------------- I A B N D O ----------------------------------------------------------------------- + `P` and `M` were excluded because they are TREESAME to a parent. `E`, `C` and `B` were all walked, but only `B` was !TREESAME, so the others do not appear. + Note that without parent rewriting, it is not really possible to talk about the parent/child relationships between the commits, so we show them disconnected. --full-history with parent rewriting:: Ordinary commits are only included if they are !TREESAME (though this can be changed, see '\--sparse' below). + Merges are always included. However, their parent list is rewritten: Along each parent, prune away commits that are not included themselves. This results in + ----------------------------------------------------------------------- .-A---M---N---O---P / / / / / I B / D / \ / / / / `-------------' ----------------------------------------------------------------------- + Compare to '\--full-history' without rewriting above. Note that `E` was pruned away because it is TREESAME, but the parent list of P was rewritten to contain `E`'s parent `I`. The same happened for `C` and `N`. Note also that `P` was included despite being TREESAME. In addition to the above settings, you can change whether TREESAME affects inclusion: --dense:: Commits that are walked are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent. --sparse:: All commits that are walked are included. + Note that without '\--full-history', this still simplifies merges: if one of the parents is TREESAME, we follow only that one, so the other sides of the merge are never walked. --simplify-merges:: First, build a history graph in the same way that '\--full-history' with parent rewriting does (see above). + Then simplify each commit `C` to its replacement `C'` in the final history according to the following rules: + -- * Set `C'` to `C`. + * Replace each parent `P` of `C'` with its simplification `P'`. In the process, drop parents that are ancestors of other parents, and remove duplicates. + * 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` and `P` over '\--full-history': + -- * `N`'s parent list had `I` removed, because it is an ancestor of the other parent `M`. Still, `N` remained because it is !TREESAME. + * `P`'s parent list similarly had `I` removed. `P` was then removed completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME. -- Finally, there is a fifth simplification mode available: --ancestry-path:: Limit the displayed commits to those directly on the ancestry chain between the "from" and "to" commits in the given commit range. I.e. only display commits that are ancestor of the "to" commit, and descendants of the "from" commit. + As an example use case, consider the following commit history: + ----------------------------------------------------------------------- D---E-------F / \ \ B---C---G---H---I---J / \ A-------K---------------L--M ----------------------------------------------------------------------- + A regular 'D..M' computes the set of commits that are ancestors of `M`, but excludes the ones that are ancestors of `D`. This is useful to see what happened to the history leading to `M` since `D`, in the sense that "what does `M` have that did not exist in `D`". The result in this example would be all the commits, except `A` and `B` (and `D` itself, of course). + When we want to find out what commits in `M` are contaminated with the bug introduced by `D` and need fixing, however, we might want to view only the subset of 'D..M' that are actually descendants of `D`, i.e. excluding `C` and `K`. This is exactly what the '\--ancestry-path' option does. Applied to the 'D..M' range, it results in: + ----------------------------------------------------------------------- E-------F \ \ G---H---I---J \ L--M ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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). ifdef::git-rev-list[] Bisection Helpers ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ --bisect:: Limit output to the one commit object which is roughly halfway between included and excluded commits. Note that the bad bisection ref `refs/bisect/bad` is added to the included commits (if it exists) and the good bisection refs `refs/bisect/good-*` are added to the excluded commits (if they exist). Thus, supposing there are no refs in `refs/bisect/`, if ----------------------------------------------------------------------- $ git rev-list --bisect foo ^bar ^baz ----------------------------------------------------------------------- outputs 'midpoint', the output of the two commands ----------------------------------------------------------------------- $ git rev-list foo ^midpoint $ git rev-list midpoint ^bar ^baz ----------------------------------------------------------------------- would be of roughly the same length. Finding the change which introduces a regression is thus reduced to a binary search: repeatedly generate and test new 'midpoint's until the commit chain is of length one. --bisect-vars:: This calculates the same as `--bisect`, except that refs in `refs/bisect/` are not used, and except that this outputs text ready to be eval'ed by the shell. These lines will assign the name of the midpoint revision to the variable `bisect_rev`, and the expected number of commits to be tested after `bisect_rev` is tested to `bisect_nr`, the expected number of commits to be tested if `bisect_rev` turns out to be good to `bisect_good`, the expected number of commits to be tested if `bisect_rev` turns out to be bad to `bisect_bad`, and the number of commits we are bisecting right now to `bisect_all`. --bisect-all:: This outputs all the commit objects between the included and excluded commits, ordered by their distance to the included and excluded commits. Refs in `refs/bisect/` are not used. The farthest from them is displayed first. (This is the only one displayed by `--bisect`.) + This is useful because it makes it easy to choose a good commit to test when you want to avoid to test some of them for some reason (they may not compile for example). + This option can be used along with `--bisect-vars`, in this case, after all the sorted commit objects, there will be the same text as if `--bisect-vars` had been used alone. endif::git-rev-list[] Commit Ordering ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ By default, the commits are shown in reverse chronological order. --topo-order:: This option makes them appear in topological order (i.e. descendant commits are shown before their parents). --date-order:: This option is similar to '--topo-order' in the sense that no parent comes before all of its children, but otherwise things are still ordered in the commit timestamp order. --reverse:: Output the commits in reverse order. Cannot be combined with '\--walk-reflogs'. Object Traversal ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ These options are mostly targeted for packing of git repositories. --objects:: Print the object IDs of any object referenced by the listed commits. '--objects foo ^bar' thus means "send me all object IDs which I need to download if I have the commit object 'bar', but not 'foo'". --objects-edge:: Similar to '--objects', but also print the IDs of excluded commits prefixed with a "-" character. This is used by linkgit:git-pack-objects[1] to build "thin" pack, which records objects in deltified form based on objects contained in these excluded commits to reduce network traffic. --unpacked:: Only useful with '--objects'; print the object IDs that are not in packs. --no-walk:: Only show the given revs, but do not traverse their ancestors. --do-walk:: Overrides a previous --no-walk. Commit Formatting ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ifdef::git-rev-list[] Using these options, linkgit:git-rev-list[1] will act similar to the more specialized family of commit log tools: linkgit:git-log[1], linkgit:git-show[1], and linkgit:git-whatchanged[1] endif::git-rev-list[] include::pretty-options.txt[] --relative-date:: Synonym for `--date=relative`. --date=(relative|local|default|iso|rfc|short|raw):: Only takes effect for dates shown in human-readable format, such as when using "--pretty". `log.date` config variable sets a default value for log command's --date option. + `--date=relative` shows dates relative to the current time, e.g. "2 hours ago". + `--date=local` shows timestamps in user's local timezone. + `--date=iso` (or `--date=iso8601`) shows timestamps in ISO 8601 format. + `--date=rfc` (or `--date=rfc2822`) shows timestamps in RFC 2822 format, often found in E-mail messages. + `--date=short` shows only date but not time, in `YYYY-MM-DD` format. + `--date=raw` shows the date in the internal raw git format `%s %z` format. + `--date=default` shows timestamps in the original timezone (either committer's or author's). ifdef::git-rev-list[] --header:: Print the contents of the commit in raw-format; each record is separated with a NUL character. endif::git-rev-list[] --parents:: Print also the parents of the commit (in the form "commit parent..."). Also enables parent rewriting, see 'History Simplification' below. --children:: Print also the children of the commit (in the form "commit child..."). Also enables parent rewriting, see 'History Simplification' below. ifdef::git-rev-list[] --timestamp:: Print the raw commit timestamp. endif::git-rev-list[] --left-right:: Mark which side of a symmetric diff a commit is reachable from. Commits from the left side are prefixed with `<` and those from the right with `>`. If combined with `--boundary`, those commits are prefixed with `-`. + For example, if you have this topology: + ----------------------------------------------------------------------- y---b---b branch B / \ / / . / / \ o---x---a---a branch A ----------------------------------------------------------------------- + you would get an output like this: + ----------------------------------------------------------------------- $ git rev-list --left-right --boundary --pretty=oneline A...B >bbbbbbb... 3rd on b >bbbbbbb... 2nd on b