git-rev-list(1) — Linux manual page
GIT-REV-LIST(1) Git Manual GIT-REV-LIST(1)
NAME
git-rev-list - Lists commit objects in reverse chronological
order
SYNOPSIS
git rev-list [<options>] <commit>... [--] [<path>...]
DESCRIPTION
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 rev-list 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 rev-list origin..HEAD
$ git rev-list 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 rev-list A B --not $(git merge-base --all A B)
$ git rev-list A...B
rev-list is an essential Git command, since it provides the
ability to build and traverse commit ancestry graphs. For this
reason, it has a lot of different options that enable it to be
used by commands as different as git bisect and git repack.
OPTIONS
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.
--max-age=<timestamp>, --min-age=<timestamp>
Limit the commits output to specified time range.
--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).
--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.
--exclude-first-parent-only
When finding commits to exclude (with a ^), follow only the
first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit. This can be
used to find the set of changes in a topic branch from the
point where it diverged from the remote branch, given that
arbitrary merges can be valid topic branch changes.
--not
Reverses the meaning of the ^ prefix (or lack thereof) for
all following revision specifiers, up to the next --not. When
used on the command line before --stdin, the revisions passed
through stdin will not be affected by it. Conversely, when
passed via standard input, the revisions passed on the
command line will not be affected by it.
--all
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/, along with HEAD, are
listed on the command line as <commit>.
--branches[=<pattern>]
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/heads are listed on the
command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit
branches to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks
?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.
--tags[=<pattern>]
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/tags are listed on the
command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit tags
to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, *, or
[, /* at the end is implied.
--remotes[=<pattern>]
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/remotes are listed on the
command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit
remote-tracking branches to ones matching given shell glob.
If pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.
--glob=<glob-pattern>
Pretend as if all the refs matching shell glob <glob-pattern>
are listed on the command line as <commit>. Leading refs/, is
automatically prepended if missing. If pattern lacks ?, *, or
[, /* at the end is implied.
--exclude=<glob-pattern>
Do not include refs matching <glob-pattern> that the next
--all, --branches, --tags, --remotes, or --glob would
otherwise consider. Repetitions of this option accumulate
exclusion patterns up to the next --all, --branches, --tags,
--remotes, or --glob option (other options or arguments do
not clear accumulated patterns).
The patterns given should not begin with refs/heads,
refs/tags, or refs/remotes when applied to --branches,
--tags, or --remotes, respectively, and they must begin with
refs/ when applied to --glob or --all. If a trailing /* is
intended, it must be given explicitly.
--exclude-hidden=[fetch|receive|uploadpack]
Do not include refs that would be hidden by git-fetch,
git-receive-pack or git-upload-pack by consulting the
appropriate fetch.hideRefs, receive.hideRefs or
uploadpack.hideRefs configuration along with
transfer.hideRefs (see git-config(1)). This option affects
the next pseudo-ref option --all or --glob and is cleared
after processing them.
--reflog
Pretend as if all objects mentioned by reflogs are listed on
the command line as <commit>.
--alternate-refs
Pretend as if all objects mentioned as ref tips of alternate
repositories were listed on the command line. An alternate
repository is any repository whose object directory is
specified in objects/info/alternates. The set of included
objects may be modified by core.alternateRefsCommand, etc.
See git-config(1).
--single-worktree
By default, all working trees will be examined by the
following options when there are more than one (see
git-worktree(1)): --all, --reflog and --indexed-objects. This
option forces them to examine the current working tree only.
--ignore-missing
Upon seeing an invalid object name in the input, pretend as
if the bad input was not given.
--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.
--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.
--disk-usage, --disk-usage=human
Suppress normal output; instead, print the sum of the bytes
used for on-disk storage by the selected commits or objects.
This is equivalent to piping the output into git cat-file
--batch-check='%(objectsize:disk)', except that it runs much
faster (especially with --use-bitmap-index). See the CAVEATS
section in git-cat-file(1) for the limitations of what
"on-disk storage" means. With the optional value human,
on-disk storage size is shown in human-readable string(e.g.
12.24 Kib, 3.50 Mib).
--cherry-mark
Like --cherry-pick (see below) but mark equivalent commits
with = rather than omitting them, and inequivalent ones with
+.
--cherry-pick
Omit any commit that introduces the same change as another
commit on the “other side” when the set of commits are
limited with symmetric difference.
For example, if you have two branches, A and B, a usual way
to list all commits on only one side of them is with
--left-right (see the example below in the description of the
--left-right option). However, it shows the commits that were
cherry-picked from the other branch (for example, “3rd on b”
may be cherry-picked from branch A). With this option, such
pairs of commits are excluded from the output.
--left-only, --right-only
List only commits on the respective side of a symmetric
difference, i.e. only those which would be marked < resp. >
by --left-right.
For example, --cherry-pick --right-only A...B omits those
commits from B which are in A or are patch-equivalent to a
commit in A. In other words, this lists the + commits from
git cherry A B. More precisely, --cherry-pick --right-only
--no-merges gives the exact list.
--cherry
A synonym for --right-only --cherry-mark --no-merges; useful
to limit the output to the commits on our side and mark those
that have been applied to the other side of a forked history
with git log --cherry upstream...mybranch, similar to git
cherry upstream mybranch.
-g, --walk-reflogs
Instead of walking the commit ancestry chain, walk reflog
entries from the most recent one to older ones. When this
option is used you cannot specify commits to exclude (that
is, ^commit, commit1..commit2, and commit1...commit2
notations cannot be used).
With --pretty format other than oneline and reference (for
obvious reasons), this causes the output to have two extra
lines of information taken from the reflog. The reflog
designator in the output may be shown as ref@{<Nth>} (where
<Nth> is the reverse-chronological index in the reflog) or as
ref@{<timestamp>} (with the <timestamp> for that entry),
depending on a few rules:
1. If the starting point is specified as ref@{<Nth>}, show
the index format.
2. If the starting point was specified as ref@{now}, show
the timestamp format.
3. If neither was used, but --date was given on the command
line, show the timestamp in the format requested by
--date.
4. Otherwise, show the index format.
Under --pretty=oneline, the commit message is prefixed with
this information on the same line. This option cannot be
combined with --reverse. See also git-reflog(1).
Under --pretty=reference, this information will not be shown
at all.
--merge
Show commits touching conflicted paths in the range
HEAD...<other>, where <other> is the first existing pseudoref
in MERGE_HEAD, CHERRY_PICK_HEAD, REVERT_HEAD or REBASE_HEAD.
Only works when the index has unmerged entries. This option
can be used to show relevant commits when resolving conflicts
from a 3-way merge.
--boundary
Output excluded boundary commits. Boundary commits are
prefixed with -.
--use-bitmap-index
Try to speed up the traversal using the pack bitmap index (if
one is available). Note that when traversing with --objects,
trees and blobs will not have their associated path printed.
--progress=<header>
Show progress reports on stderr as objects are considered.
The <header> text will be printed with each progress update.
History Simplification
Sometimes you are only interested in parts of the history, for
example the commits modifying a particular <path>. But there are
two parts of History Simplification, one part is selecting the
commits and the other is how to do it, as there are various
strategies to simplify the history.
The following options select the commits to be shown:
<paths>
Commits modifying the given <paths> are selected.
--simplify-by-decoration
Commits that are referred by some branch or tag are selected.
Note that extra commits can be shown to give a meaningful
history.
The following options affect the way the simplification is
performed:
Default mode
Simplifies the history to the simplest history explaining the
final state of the tree. Simplest because it prunes some side
branches if the end result is the same (i.e. merging branches
with the same content)
--show-pulls
Include all commits from the default mode, but also any merge
commits that are not TREESAME to the first parent but are
TREESAME to a later parent. This mode is helpful for showing
the merge commits that "first introduced" a change to a
branch.
--full-history
Same as the default mode, but does not prune some history.
--dense
Only the selected commits are shown, plus some to have a
meaningful history.
--sparse
All commits in the simplified history are shown.
--simplify-merges
Additional option to --full-history to remove some needless
merges from the resulting history, as there are no selected
commits contributing to this merge.
--ancestry-path[=<commit>]
When given a range of commits to display (e.g.
commit1..commit2 or commit2 ^commit1), only display commits
in that range that are ancestors of <commit>, descendants of
<commit>, or <commit> itself. If no commit is specified, use
commit1 (the excluded part of the range) as <commit>. Can be
passed multiple times; if so, a commit is included if it is
any of the commits given or if it is an ancestor or
descendant of one of them.
A more detailed explanation follows.
Suppose you specified foo as the <paths>. We shall call commits
that modify foo !TREESAME, and the rest TREESAME. (In a diff
filtered for foo, they look different and equal, respectively.)
In the following, we will always refer to the same example
history to illustrate the differences between simplification
settings. We assume that you are filtering for a file foo in this
commit graph:
.-A---M---N---O---P---Q
/ / / / / /
I B C D E Y
\ / / / / /
`-------------' X
The horizontal line of history A---Q is taken to be the first
parent of each merge. The commits are:
• I is the initial commit, in which foo exists with contents
“asdf”, and a file quux exists with contents “quux”. Initial
commits are compared to an empty tree, so I is !TREESAME.
• In A, foo contains just “foo”.
• B contains the same change as A. Its merge M is trivial and
hence TREESAME to all parents.
• C does not change foo, but its merge N changes it to
“foobar”, so it is not TREESAME to any parent.
• D sets foo to “baz”. Its merge O combines the strings from N
and D to “foobarbaz”; i.e., it is not TREESAME to any parent.
• E changes quux to “xyzzy”, and its merge P combines the
strings to “quux xyzzy”. P is TREESAME to O, but not to E.
• X is an independent root commit that added a new file side,
and Y modified it. Y is TREESAME to X. Its merge Q added
side to P, and Q is TREESAME to P, but not to Y.
rev-list walks backwards through history, including or excluding
commits based on whether --full-history and/or parent rewriting
(via --parents or --children) are used. The following settings
are available.
Default mode
Commits are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent
(though this can be changed, see --sparse below). If the
commit was a merge, and it was TREESAME to one parent, follow
only that parent. (Even if there are several TREESAME
parents, follow only one of them.) Otherwise, follow all
parents.
This results in:
.-A---N---O
/ / /
I---------D
Note how the rule to only follow the TREESAME parent, if one
is available, removed B from consideration entirely. C was
considered via N, but is TREESAME. Root commits are compared
to an empty tree, so I is !TREESAME.
Parent/child relations are only visible with --parents, but
that does not affect the commits selected in default mode, so
we have shown the parent lines.
--full-history without parent rewriting
This mode differs from the default in one point: always
follow all parents of a merge, even if it is TREESAME to one
of them. Even if more than one side of the merge has commits
that are included, this does not imply that the merge itself
is! In the example, we get
I A B N D O P Q
M was excluded because it is TREESAME to both parents. E, C
and B were all walked, but only B was !TREESAME, so the
others do not appear.
Note that without parent rewriting, it is not really possible
to talk about the parent/child relationships between the
commits, so we show them disconnected.
--full-history with parent rewriting
Ordinary commits are only included if they are !TREESAME
(though this can be changed, see --sparse below).
Merges are always included. However, their parent list is
rewritten: Along each parent, prune away commits that are not
included themselves. This results in
.-A---M---N---O---P---Q
/ / / / /
I B / D /
\ / / / /
`-------------'
Compare to --full-history without rewriting above. Note that
E was pruned away because it is TREESAME, but the parent list
of P was rewritten to contain E's parent I. The same happened
for C and N, and X, Y and Q.
In addition to the above settings, you can change whether
TREESAME affects inclusion:
--dense
Commits that are walked are included if they are not TREESAME
to any parent.
--sparse
All commits that are walked are included.
Note that without --full-history, this still simplifies
merges: if one of the parents is TREESAME, we follow only
that one, so the other sides of the merge are never walked.
--simplify-merges
First, build a history graph in the same way that
--full-history with parent rewriting does (see above).
Then simplify each commit C to its replacement C' in the
final history according to the following rules:
• Set C' to C.
• Replace each parent P of C' with its simplification P'.
In the process, drop parents that are ancestors of other
parents or that are root commits TREESAME to an empty
tree, and remove duplicates, but take care to never drop
all parents that we are TREESAME to.
• If after this parent rewriting, C' is a root or merge
commit (has zero or >1 parents), a boundary commit, or
!TREESAME, it remains. Otherwise, it is replaced with its
only parent.
The effect of this is best shown by way of comparing to
--full-history with parent rewriting. The example turns into:
.-A---M---N---O
/ / /
I B D
\ / /
`---------'
Note the major differences in N, P, and Q over
--full-history:
• N's parent list had I removed, because it is an ancestor
of the other parent M. Still, N remained because it is
!TREESAME.
• P's parent list similarly had I removed. P was then
removed completely, because it had one parent and is
TREESAME.
• Q's parent list had Y simplified to X. X was then
removed, because it was a TREESAME root. Q was then
removed completely, because it had one parent and is
TREESAME.
There is another simplification mode available:
--ancestry-path[=<commit>]
Limit the displayed commits to those which are an ancestor of
<commit>, or which are a descendant of <commit>, or are
<commit> itself.
As an example use case, consider the following commit
history:
D---E-------F
/ \ \
B---C---G---H---I---J
/ \
A-------K---------------L--M
A regular D..M computes the set of commits that are ancestors
of M, but excludes the ones that are ancestors of D. This is
useful to see what happened to the history leading to M since
D, in the sense that “what does M have that did not exist in
D”. The result in this example would be all the commits,
except A and B (and D itself, of course).
When we want to find out what commits in M are contaminated
with the bug introduced by D and need fixing, however, we
might want to view only the subset of D..M that are actually
descendants of D, i.e. excluding C and K. This is exactly
what the --ancestry-path option does. Applied to the D..M
range, it results in:
E-------F
\ \
G---H---I---J
\
L--M
We can also use --ancestry-path=D instead of --ancestry-path
which means the same thing when applied to the D..M range but
is just more explicit.
If we instead are interested in a given topic within this
range, and all commits affected by that topic, we may only
want to view the subset of D..M which contain that topic in
their ancestry path. So, using --ancestry-path=H D..M for
example would result in:
E
\
G---H---I---J
\
L--M
Whereas --ancestry-path=K D..M would result in
K---------------L--M
Before discussing another option, --show-pulls, we need to create
a new example history.
A common problem users face when looking at simplified history is
that a commit they know changed a file somehow does not appear in
the file’s simplified history. Let’s demonstrate a new example
and show how options such as --full-history and --simplify-merges
works in that case:
.-A---M-----C--N---O---P
/ / \ \ \/ / /
I B \ R-'`-Z' /
\ / \/ /
\ / /\ /
`---X--' `---Y--'
For this example, suppose I created file.txt which was modified
by A, B, and X in different ways. The single-parent commits C, Z,
and Y do not change file.txt. The merge commit M was created by
resolving the merge conflict to include both changes from A and B
and hence is not TREESAME to either. The merge commit R, however,
was created by ignoring the contents of file.txt at M and taking
only the contents of file.txt at X. Hence, R is TREESAME to X but
not M. Finally, the natural merge resolution to create N is to
take the contents of file.txt at R, so N is TREESAME to R but not
C. The merge commits O and P are TREESAME to their first parents,
but not to their second parents, Z and Y respectively.
When using the default mode, N and R both have a TREESAME parent,
so those edges are walked and the others are ignored. The
resulting history graph is:
I---X
When using --full-history, Git walks every edge. This will
discover the commits A and B and the merge M, but also will
reveal the merge commits O and P. With parent rewriting, the
resulting graph is:
.-A---M--------N---O---P
/ / \ \ \/ / /
I B \ R-'`--' /
\ / \/ /
\ / /\ /
`---X--' `------'
Here, the merge commits O and P contribute extra noise, as they
did not actually contribute a change to file.txt. They only
merged a topic that was based on an older version of file.txt.
This is a common issue in repositories using a workflow where
many contributors work in parallel and merge their topic branches
along a single trunk: many unrelated merges appear in the
--full-history results.
When using the --simplify-merges option, the commits O and P
disappear from the results. This is because the rewritten second
parents of O and P are reachable from their first parents. Those
edges are removed and then the commits look like single-parent
commits that are TREESAME to their parent. This also happens to
the commit N, resulting in a history view as follows:
.-A---M--.
/ / \
I B R
\ / /
\ / /
`---X--'
In this view, we see all of the important single-parent changes
from A, B, and X. We also see the carefully-resolved merge M and
the not-so-carefully-resolved merge R. This is usually enough
information to determine why the commits A and B "disappeared"
from history in the default view. However, there are a few issues
with this approach.
The first issue is performance. Unlike any previous option, the
--simplify-merges option requires walking the entire commit
history before returning a single result. This can make the
option difficult to use for very large repositories.
The second issue is one of auditing. When many contributors are
working on the same repository, it is important which merge
commits introduced a change into an important branch. The
problematic merge R above is not likely to be the merge commit
that was used to merge into an important branch. Instead, the
merge N was used to merge R and X into the important branch. This
commit may have information about why the change X came to
override the changes from A and B in its commit message.
--show-pulls
In addition to the commits shown in the default history, show
each merge commit that is not TREESAME to its first parent
but is TREESAME to a later parent.
When a merge commit is included by --show-pulls, the merge is
treated as if it "pulled" the change from another branch.
When using --show-pulls on this example (and no other
options) the resulting graph is:
I---X---R---N
Here, the merge commits R and N are included because they
pulled the commits X and R into the base branch,
respectively. These merges are the reason the commits A and B
do not appear in the default history.
When --show-pulls is paired with --simplify-merges, the graph
includes all of the necessary information:
.-A---M--. N
/ / \ /
I B R
\ / /
\ / /
`---X--'
Notice that since M is reachable from R, the edge from N to M
was simplified away. However, N still appears in the history
as an important commit because it "pulled" the change R into
the main branch.
The --simplify-by-decoration option allows you to view only the
big picture of the topology of the history, by omitting commits
that are not referenced by tags. Commits are marked as !TREESAME
(in other words, kept after history simplification rules
described above) if (1) they are referenced by tags, or (2) they
change the contents of the paths given on the command line. All
other commits are marked as TREESAME (subject to be simplified
away).
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.
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.
--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”. See also --object-names below.
--in-commit-order
Print tree and blob ids in order of the commits. The tree and
blob ids are printed after they are first referenced by a
commit.
--objects-edge
Similar to --objects, but also print the IDs of excluded
commits prefixed with a “-” character. This is used by
git-pack-objects(1) to build a “thin” pack, which records
objects in deltified form based on objects contained in these
excluded commits to reduce network traffic.
--objects-edge-aggressive
Similar to --objects-edge, but it tries harder to find
excluded commits at the cost of increased time. This is used
instead of --objects-edge to build “thin” packs for shallow
repositories.
--indexed-objects
Pretend as if all trees and blobs used by the index are
listed on the command line. Note that you probably want to
use --objects, too.
--unpacked
Only useful with --objects; print the object IDs that are not
in packs.
--object-names
Only useful with --objects; print the names of the object IDs
that are found. This is the default behavior. Note that the
"name" of each object is ambiguous, and mostly intended as a
hint for packing objects. In particular: no distinction is
made between the names of tags, trees, and blobs; path names
may be modified to remove newlines; and if an object would
appear multiple times with different names, only one name is
shown.
--no-object-names
Only useful with --objects; does not print the names of the
object IDs that are found. This inverts --object-names. This
flag allows the output to be more easily parsed by commands
such as git-cat-file(1).
--filter=<filter-spec>
Only useful with one of the --objects*; omits objects
(usually blobs) from the list of printed objects. The
<filter-spec> may be one of the following:
The form --filter=blob:none omits all blobs.
The form --filter=blob:limit=<n>[kmg] omits blobs of size at
least n bytes or units. n may be zero. The suffixes k, m, and
g can be used to name units in KiB, MiB, or GiB. For example,
blob:limit=1k is the same as blob:limit=1024.
The form --filter=object:type=(tag|commit|tree|blob) omits
all objects which are not of the requested type.
The form --filter=sparse:oid=<blob-ish> uses a
sparse-checkout specification contained in the blob (or
blob-expression) <blob-ish> to omit blobs that would not be
required for a sparse checkout on the requested refs.
The form --filter=tree:<depth> omits all blobs and trees
whose depth from the root tree is >= <depth> (minimum depth
if an object is located at multiple depths in the commits
traversed). <depth>=0 will not include any trees or blobs
unless included explicitly in the command-line (or standard
input when --stdin is used). <depth>=1 will include only the
tree and blobs which are referenced directly by a commit
reachable from <commit> or an explicitly-given object.
<depth>=2 is like <depth>=1 while also including trees and
blobs one more level removed from an explicitly-given commit
or tree.
Note that the form --filter=sparse:path=<path> that wants to
read from an arbitrary path on the filesystem has been
dropped for security reasons.
Multiple --filter= flags can be specified to combine filters.
Only objects which are accepted by every filter are included.
The form --filter=combine:<filter1>+<filter2>+...<filterN>
can also be used to combined several filters, but this is
harder than just repeating the --filter flag and is usually
not necessary. Filters are joined by + and individual filters
are %-encoded (i.e. URL-encoded). Besides the + and %
characters, the following characters are reserved and also
must be encoded: ~!@#$^&*()[]{}\;",<>?'` as well as all
characters with ASCII code <= 0x20, which includes space and
newline.
Other arbitrary characters can also be encoded. For instance,
combine:tree:3+blob:none and combine:tree%3A3+blob%3Anone are
equivalent.
--no-filter
Turn off any previous --filter= argument.
--filter-provided-objects
Filter the list of explicitly provided objects, which would
otherwise always be printed even if they did not match any of
the filters. Only useful with --filter=.
--filter-print-omitted
Only useful with --filter=; prints a list of the objects
omitted by the filter. Object IDs are prefixed with a “~”
character.
--missing=<missing-action>
A debug option to help with future "partial clone"
development. This option specifies how missing objects are
handled.
The form --missing=error requests that rev-list stop with an
error if a missing object is encountered. This is the default
action.
The form --missing=allow-any will allow object traversal to
continue if a missing object is encountered. Missing objects
will silently be omitted from the results.
The form --missing=allow-promisor is like allow-any, but will
only allow object traversal to continue for EXPECTED promisor
missing objects. Unexpected missing objects will raise an
error.
The form --missing=print is like allow-any, but will also
print a list of the missing objects. Object IDs are prefixed
with a “?” character.
If some tips passed to the traversal are missing, they will
be considered as missing too, and the traversal will ignore
them. In case we cannot get their Object ID though, an error
will be raised.
--exclude-promisor-objects
(For internal use only.) Prefilter object traversal at
promisor boundary. This is used with partial clone. This is
stronger than --missing=allow-promisor because it limits the
traversal, rather than just silencing errors about missing
objects.
--no-walk[=(sorted|unsorted)]
Only show the given commits, but do not traverse their
ancestors. This has no effect if a range is specified. If the
argument unsorted is given, the commits are shown in the
order they were given on the command line. Otherwise (if
sorted or no argument was given), the commits are shown in
reverse chronological order by commit time. Cannot be
combined with --graph.
--do-walk
Overrides a previous --no-walk.
Commit Formatting
Using these options, git-rev-list(1) will act similar to the more
specialized family of commit log tools: git-log(1), git-show(1),
and git-whatchanged(1)
--pretty[=<format>], --format=<format>
Pretty-print the contents of the commit logs in a given
format, where <format> can be one of oneline, short, medium,
full, fuller, reference, email, raw, format:<string> and
tformat:<string>. When <format> is none of the above, and has
%placeholder in it, it acts as if --pretty=tformat:<format>
were given.
See the "PRETTY FORMATS" section for some additional details
for each format. When =<format> part is omitted, it defaults
to medium.
Note: you can specify the default pretty format in the
repository configuration (see git-config(1)).
--abbrev-commit
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object
name, show a prefix that names the object uniquely.
"--abbrev=<n>" (which also modifies diff output, if it is
displayed) option can be used to specify the minimum length
of the prefix.
This should make "--pretty=oneline" a whole lot more readable
for people using 80-column terminals.
--no-abbrev-commit
Show the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name. This
negates --abbrev-commit, either explicit or implied by other
options such as "--oneline". It also overrides the
log.abbrevCommit variable.
--oneline
This is a shorthand for "--pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit"
used together.
--encoding=<encoding>
Commit objects record the character encoding used for the log
message in their encoding header; this option can be used to
tell the command to re-code the commit log message in the
encoding preferred by the user. For non plumbing commands
this defaults to UTF-8. Note that if an object claims to be
encoded in X and we are outputting in X, we will output the
object verbatim; this means that invalid sequences in the
original commit may be copied to the output. Likewise, if
iconv(3) fails to convert the commit, we will quietly output
the original object verbatim.
--expand-tabs=<n>, --expand-tabs, --no-expand-tabs
Perform a tab expansion (replace each tab with enough spaces
to fill to the next display column that is a multiple of <n>)
in the log message before showing it in the output.
--expand-tabs is a short-hand for --expand-tabs=8, and
--no-expand-tabs is a short-hand for --expand-tabs=0, which
disables tab expansion.
By default, tabs are expanded in pretty formats that indent
the log message by 4 spaces (i.e. medium, which is the
default, full, and fuller).
--show-signature
Check the validity of a signed commit object by passing the
signature to gpg --verify and show the output.
--relative-date
Synonym for --date=relative.
--date=<format>
Only takes effect for dates shown in human-readable format,
such as when using --pretty. log.date config variable sets a
default value for the log command’s --date option. By
default, dates are shown in the original time zone (either
committer’s or author’s). If -local is appended to the format
(e.g., iso-local), the user’s local time zone is used
instead.
--date=relative shows dates relative to the current time,
e.g. “2 hours ago”. The -local option has no effect for
--date=relative.
--date=local is an alias for --date=default-local.
--date=iso (or --date=iso8601) shows timestamps in a ISO
8601-like format. The differences to the strict ISO 8601
format are:
• a space instead of the T date/time delimiter
• a space between time and time zone
• no colon between hours and minutes of the time zone
--date=iso-strict (or --date=iso8601-strict) shows timestamps
in strict ISO 8601 format.
--date=rfc (or --date=rfc2822) shows timestamps in RFC 2822
format, often found in email messages.
--date=short shows only the date, but not the time, in
YYYY-MM-DD format.
--date=raw shows the date as seconds since the epoch
(1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC), followed by a space, and then the
timezone as an offset from UTC (a + or - with four digits;
the first two are hours, and the second two are minutes).
I.e., as if the timestamp were formatted with strftime("%s
%z")). Note that the -local option does not affect the
seconds-since-epoch value (which is always measured in UTC),
but does switch the accompanying timezone value.
--date=human shows the timezone if the timezone does not
match the current time-zone, and doesn’t print the whole date
if that matches (ie skip printing year for dates that are
"this year", but also skip the whole date itself if it’s in
the last few days and we can just say what weekday it was).
For older dates the hour and minute is also omitted.
--date=unix shows the date as a Unix epoch timestamp (seconds
since 1970). As with --raw, this is always in UTC and
therefore -local has no effect.
--date=format:... feeds the format ... to your system
strftime, except for %s, %z, and %Z, which are handled
internally. Use --date=format:%c to show the date in your
system locale’s preferred format. See the strftime manual for
a complete list of format placeholders. When using -local,
the correct syntax is --date=format-local:....
--date=default is the default format, and is based on
ctime(3) output. It shows a single line with three-letter day
of the week, three-letter month, day-of-month,
hour-minute-seconds in "HH:MM:SS" format, followed by 4-digit
year, plus timezone information, unless the local time zone
is used, e.g. Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 +0000.
--header
Print the contents of the commit in raw-format; each record
is separated with a NUL character.
--no-commit-header
Suppress the header line containing "commit" and the object
ID printed before the specified format. This has no effect on
the built-in formats; only custom formats are affected.
--commit-header
Overrides a previous --no-commit-header.
--parents
Print also the parents of the commit (in the form "commit
parent..."). Also enables parent rewriting, see History
Simplification above.
--children
Print also the children of the commit (in the form "commit
child..."). Also enables parent rewriting, see History
Simplification above.
--timestamp
Print the raw commit timestamp.
--left-right
Mark which side of a symmetric difference a commit is
reachable from. Commits from the left side are prefixed with
< and those from the right with >. If combined with
--boundary, those commits are prefixed with -.
For example, if you have this topology:
y---b---b branch B
/ \ /
/ .
/ / \
o---x---a---a branch A
you would get an output like this:
$ git rev-list --left-right --boundary --pretty=oneline A...B
>bbbbbbb... 3rd on b
>bbbbbbb... 2nd on b
<aaaaaaa... 3rd on a
<aaaaaaa... 2nd on a
-yyyyyyy... 1st on b
-xxxxxxx... 1st on a
--graph
Draw a text-based graphical representation of the commit
history on the left hand side of the output. This may cause
extra lines to be printed in between commits, in order for
the graph history to be drawn properly. Cannot be combined
with --no-walk.
This enables parent rewriting, see History Simplification
above.
This implies the --topo-order option by default, but the
--date-order option may also be specified.
--show-linear-break[=<barrier>]
When --graph is not used, all history branches are flattened
which can make it hard to see that the two consecutive
commits do not belong to a linear branch. This option puts a
barrier in between them in that case. If <barrier> is
specified, it is the string that will be shown instead of the
default one.
--count
Print a number stating how many commits would have been
listed, and suppress all other output. When used together
with --left-right, instead print the counts for left and
right commits, separated by a tab. When used together with
--cherry-mark, omit patch equivalent commits from these
counts and print the count for equivalent commits separated
by a tab.
PRETTY FORMATS
If the commit is a merge, and if the pretty-format is not
oneline, email or raw, an additional line is inserted before the
Author: line. This line begins with "Merge: " and the hashes of
ancestral commits are printed, separated by spaces. Note that the
listed commits may not necessarily be the list of the direct
parent commits if you have limited your view of history: for
example, if you are only interested in changes related to a
certain directory or file.
There are several built-in formats, and you can define additional
formats by setting a pretty.<name> config option to either
another format name, or a format: string, as described below (see
git-config(1)). Here are the details of the built-in formats:
• oneline
<hash> <title-line>
This is designed to be as compact as possible.
• short
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
<title-line>
• medium
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
Date: <author-date>
<title-line>
<full-commit-message>
• full
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
Commit: <committer>
<title-line>
<full-commit-message>
• fuller
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
AuthorDate: <author-date>
Commit: <committer>
CommitDate: <committer-date>
<title-line>
<full-commit-message>
• reference
<abbrev-hash> (<title-line>, <short-author-date>)
This format is used to refer to another commit in a commit
message and is the same as --pretty='format:%C(auto)%h (%s,
%ad)'. By default, the date is formatted with --date=short
unless another --date option is explicitly specified. As with
any format: with format placeholders, its output is not
affected by other options like --decorate and --walk-reflogs.
• email
From <hash> <date>
From: <author>
Date: <author-date>
Subject: [PATCH] <title-line>
<full-commit-message>
• mboxrd
Like email, but lines in the commit message starting with
"From " (preceded by zero or more ">") are quoted with ">" so
they aren’t confused as starting a new commit.
• raw
The raw format shows the entire commit exactly as stored in
the commit object. Notably, the hashes are displayed in full,
regardless of whether --abbrev or --no-abbrev are used, and
parents information show the true parent commits, without
taking grafts or history simplification into account. Note
that this format affects the way commits are displayed, but
not the way the diff is shown e.g. with git log --raw. To get
full object names in a raw diff format, use --no-abbrev.
• format:<format-string>
The format:<format-string> format allows you to specify which
information you want to show. It works a little bit like
printf format, with the notable exception that you get a
newline with %n instead of \n.
E.g, format:"The author of %h was %an, %ar%nThe title was
>>%s<<%n" would show something like this:
The author of fe6e0ee was Junio C Hamano, 23 hours ago
The title was >>t4119: test autocomputing -p<n> for traditional diff input.<<
The placeholders are:
• Placeholders that expand to a single literal character:
%n
newline
%%
a raw %
%x00
%x followed by two hexadecimal digits is replaced
with a byte with the hexadecimal digits' value (we
will call this "literal formatting code" in the rest
of this document).
• Placeholders that affect formatting of later
placeholders:
%Cred
switch color to red
%Cgreen
switch color to green
%Cblue
switch color to blue
%Creset
reset color
%C(...)
color specification, as described under Values in the
"CONFIGURATION FILE" section of git-config(1). By
default, colors are shown only when enabled for log
output (by color.diff, color.ui, or --color, and
respecting the auto settings of the former if we are
going to a terminal). %C(auto,...) is accepted as a
historical synonym for the default (e.g.,
%C(auto,red)). Specifying %C(always,...) will show
the colors even when color is not otherwise enabled
(though consider just using --color=always to enable
color for the whole output, including this format and
anything else git might color). auto alone (i.e.
%C(auto)) will turn on auto coloring on the next
placeholders until the color is switched again.
%m
left (<), right (>) or boundary (-) mark
%w([<w>[,<i1>[,<i2>]]])
switch line wrapping, like the -w option of
git-shortlog(1).
%<( <N> [,trunc|ltrunc|mtrunc])
make the next placeholder take at least N column
widths, padding spaces on the right if necessary.
Optionally truncate (with ellipsis ..) at the left
(ltrunc) ..ft, the middle (mtrunc) mi..le, or the end
(trunc) rig.., if the output is longer than N
columns. Note 1: that truncating only works correctly
with N >= 2. Note 2: spaces around the N and M (see
below) values are optional. Note 3: Emojis and other
wide characters will take two display columns, which
may over-run column boundaries. Note 4: decomposed
character combining marks may be misplaced at padding
boundaries.
%<|( <M> )
make the next placeholder take at least until Mth
display column, padding spaces on the right if
necessary. Use negative M values for column positions
measured from the right hand edge of the terminal
window.
%>( <N> ), %>|( <M> )
similar to %<( <N> ), %<|( <M> ) respectively, but
padding spaces on the left
%>>( <N> ), %>>|( <M> )
similar to %>( <N> ), %>|( <M> ) respectively, except
that if the next placeholder takes more spaces than
given and there are spaces on its left, use those
spaces
%><( <N> ), %><|( <M> )
similar to %<( <N> ), %<|( <M> ) respectively, but
padding both sides (i.e. the text is centered)
• Placeholders that expand to information extracted from
the commit:
%H
commit hash
%h
abbreviated commit hash
%T
tree hash
%t
abbreviated tree hash
%P
parent hashes
%p
abbreviated parent hashes
%an
author name
%aN
author name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1)
or git-blame(1))
%ae
author email
%aE
author email (respecting .mailmap, see
git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%al
author email local-part (the part before the @ sign)
%aL
author local-part (see %al) respecting .mailmap, see
git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%ad
author date (format respects --date= option)
%aD
author date, RFC2822 style
%ar
author date, relative
%at
author date, UNIX timestamp
%ai
author date, ISO 8601-like format
%aI
author date, strict ISO 8601 format
%as
author date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)
%ah
author date, human style (like the --date=human
option of git-rev-list(1))
%cn
committer name
%cN
committer name (respecting .mailmap, see
git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%ce
committer email
%cE
committer email (respecting .mailmap, see
git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%cl
committer email local-part (the part before the @
sign)
%cL
committer local-part (see %cl) respecting .mailmap,
see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%cd
committer date (format respects --date= option)
%cD
committer date, RFC2822 style
%cr
committer date, relative
%ct
committer date, UNIX timestamp
%ci
committer date, ISO 8601-like format
%cI
committer date, strict ISO 8601 format
%cs
committer date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)
%ch
committer date, human style (like the --date=human
option of git-rev-list(1))
%d
ref names, like the --decorate option of git-log(1)
%D
ref names without the " (", ")" wrapping.
%(decorate[:<options>])
ref names with custom decorations. The decorate
string may be followed by a colon and zero or more
comma-separated options. Option values may contain
literal formatting codes. These must be used for
commas (%x2C) and closing parentheses (%x29), due to
their role in the option syntax.
• prefix=<value>: Shown before the list of ref
names. Defaults to " (".
• suffix=<value>: Shown after the list of ref
names. Defaults to ")".
• separator=<value>: Shown between ref names.
Defaults to ", ".
• pointer=<value>: Shown between HEAD and the
branch it points to, if any. Defaults to " -> ".
• tag=<value>: Shown before tag names. Defaults to
"tag: ".
For example, to produce decorations with no wrapping
or tag annotations, and spaces as separators:
%(decorate:prefix=,suffix=,tag=,separator= )
%(describe[:<options>])
human-readable name, like git-describe(1); empty
string for undescribable commits. The describe string
may be followed by a colon and zero or more
comma-separated options. Descriptions can be
inconsistent when tags are added or removed at the
same time.
• tags[=<bool-value>]: Instead of only considering
annotated tags, consider lightweight tags as
well.
• abbrev=<number>: Instead of using the default
number of hexadecimal digits (which will vary
according to the number of objects in the
repository with a default of 7) of the
abbreviated object name, use <number> digits, or
as many digits as needed to form a unique object
name.
• match=<pattern>: Only consider tags matching the
given glob(7) pattern, excluding the "refs/tags/"
prefix.
• exclude=<pattern>: Do not consider tags matching
the given glob(7) pattern, excluding the
"refs/tags/" prefix.
%S
ref name given on the command line by which the
commit was reached (like git log --source), only
works with git log
%e
encoding
%s
subject
%f
sanitized subject line, suitable for a filename
%b
body
%B
raw body (unwrapped subject and body)
%GG
raw verification message from GPG for a signed commit
%G?
show "G" for a good (valid) signature, "B" for a bad
signature, "U" for a good signature with unknown
validity, "X" for a good signature that has expired,
"Y" for a good signature made by an expired key, "R"
for a good signature made by a revoked key, "E" if
the signature cannot be checked (e.g. missing key)
and "N" for no signature
%GS
show the name of the signer for a signed commit
%GK
show the key used to sign a signed commit
%GF
show the fingerprint of the key used to sign a signed
commit
%GP
show the fingerprint of the primary key whose subkey
was used to sign a signed commit
%GT
show the trust level for the key used to sign a
signed commit
%gD
reflog selector, e.g., refs/stash@{1} or
refs/stash@{2 minutes ago}; the format follows the
rules described for the -g option. The portion before
the @ is the refname as given on the command line (so
git log -g refs/heads/master would yield
refs/heads/master@{0}).
%gd
shortened reflog selector; same as %gD, but the
refname portion is shortened for human readability
(so refs/heads/master becomes just master).
%gn
reflog identity name
%gN
reflog identity name (respecting .mailmap, see
git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%ge
reflog identity email
%gE
reflog identity email (respecting .mailmap, see
git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%gs
reflog subject
%(trailers[:<options>])
display the trailers of the body as interpreted by
git-interpret-trailers(1). The trailers string may be
followed by a colon and zero or more comma-separated
options. If any option is provided multiple times,
the last occurrence wins.
• key=<key>: only show trailers with specified
<key>. Matching is done case-insensitively and
trailing colon is optional. If option is given
multiple times trailer lines matching any of the
keys are shown. This option automatically enables
the only option so that non-trailer lines in the
trailer block are hidden. If that is not desired
it can be disabled with only=false. E.g.,
%(trailers:key=Reviewed-by) shows trailer lines
with key Reviewed-by.
• only[=<bool>]: select whether non-trailer lines
from the trailer block should be included.
• separator=<sep>: specify the separator inserted
between trailer lines. Defaults to a line feed
character. The string <sep> may contain the
literal formatting codes described above. To use
comma as separator one must use %x2C as it would
otherwise be parsed as next option. E.g.,
%(trailers:key=Ticket,separator=%x2C ) shows all
trailer lines whose key is "Ticket" separated by
a comma and a space.
• unfold[=<bool>]: make it behave as if
interpret-trailer’s --unfold option was given.
E.g., %(trailers:only,unfold=true) unfolds and
shows all trailer lines.
• keyonly[=<bool>]: only show the key part of the
trailer.
• valueonly[=<bool>]: only show the value part of
the trailer.
• key_value_separator=<sep>: specify the separator
inserted between the key and value of each
trailer. Defaults to ": ". Otherwise it shares
the same semantics as separator=<sep> above.
Note
Some placeholders may depend on other options given to the
revision traversal engine. For example, the %g* reflog
options will insert an empty string unless we are traversing
reflog entries (e.g., by git log -g). The %d and %D
placeholders will use the "short" decoration format if
--decorate was not already provided on the command line.
The boolean options accept an optional value [=<bool-value>]. The
values 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
EXAMPLES
• Print the list of commits reachable from the current branch.
git rev-list HEAD
• Print the list of commits on this branch, but not present in
the upstream branch.
git rev-list @{upstream}..HEAD
• Format commits with their author and commit message (see also
the porcelain git-log(1)).
git rev-list --format=medium HEAD
• Format commits along with their diffs (see also the porcelain
git-log(1), which can do this in a single process).
git rev-list HEAD |
git diff-tree --stdin --format=medium -p
• Print the list of commits on the current branch that touched
any file in the Documentation directory.
git rev-list HEAD -- Documentation/
• Print the list of commits authored by you in the past year,
on any branch, tag, or other ref.
git rev-list --author=you@example.com --since=1.year.ago --all
• Print the list of objects reachable from the current branch
(i.e., all commits and the blobs and trees they contain).
git rev-list --objects HEAD
• Compare the disk size of all reachable objects, versus those
reachable from reflogs, versus the total packed size. This
can tell you whether running git repack -ad might reduce the
repository size (by dropping unreachable objects), and
whether expiring reflogs might help.
# reachable objects
git rev-list --disk-usage --objects --all
# plus reflogs
git rev-list --disk-usage --objects --all --reflog
# total disk size used
du -c .git/objects/pack/*.pack .git/objects/??/*
# alternative to du: add up "size" and "size-pack" fields
git count-objects -v
• Report the disk size of each branch, not including objects
used by the current branch. This can find outliers that are
contributing to a bloated repository size (e.g., because
somebody accidentally committed large build artifacts).
git for-each-ref --format='%(refname)' |
while read branch
do
size=$(git rev-list --disk-usage --objects HEAD..$branch)
echo "$size $branch"
done |
sort -n
• Compare the on-disk size of branches in one group of refs,
excluding another. If you co-mingle objects from multiple
remotes in a single repository, this can show which remotes
are contributing to the repository size (taking the size of
origin as a baseline).
git rev-list --disk-usage --objects --remotes=$suspect --not --remotes=origin
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
COLOPHON
This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
system) project. Information about the project can be found at
⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩. If you have a bug report for this manual
page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩. This page was obtained
from the project's upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2024-06-14. (At that time,
the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
repository was 2024-06-12.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
Git 2.45.2.492.gd63586 2024-06-12 GIT-REV-LIST(1)
Pages that refer to this page: dpkg-source(1), git(1), git-annotate(1), git-blame(1), git-cherry-pick(1), git-clone(1), git-config(1), git-diff-tree(1), git-fast-export(1), git-filter-branch(1), git-for-each-ref(1), gitk(1), git-log(1), git-merge-base(1), git-pack-objects(1), git-repack(1), git-revert(1), git-rev-list(1), git-show(1), git-submodule(1), gitformat-bundle(5)