git-rev-list

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 given on the command
line form a set of commits that are reachable from any of them, 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 a very 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 enables 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.

--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 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 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
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. Cannot be combined with
--bisect.

--not
Reverses the meaning of the ^ prefix (or lack thereof) for all
following revision specifiers, up to the next --not.

--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.

--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 the <commit> 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.

--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.

--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
After a failed merge, show refs that touch files having a conflict
and don't exist on all heads to merge.

--boundary
Output excluded boundary commits. Boundary commits are prefixed
with -.

--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)

--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
When given a range of commits to display (e.g. commit1..commit2 or
commit2 ^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 <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:

o 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.

o In A, foo contains just "foo".

o B contains the same change as A. Its merge M is trivial and hence
TREESAME to all parents.

o C does not change foo, but its merge N changes it to "foobar", so
it is not TREESAME to any parent.

o 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.

o E changes quux to "xyzzy", and its merge P combines the strings to
"quux xyzzy". P is TREESAME to O, but not to E.

o 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:

o Set C' to C.

o 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.

o 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:

o N's parent list had I removed, because it is an ancestor of the
other parent M. Still, N remained because it is !TREESAME.

o P's parent list similarly had I removed. P was then removed
completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME.

o 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.

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).

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. Cannot be combined with --first-parent.

--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".

--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.

--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 larger than 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=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 not 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-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.

--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 only a partial prefix. Non default number of digits can be
specified with "--abbrev=<n>" (which also modifies diff output, if
it is displayed).

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 and those options which imply it such as
"--oneline". It also overrides the log.abbrevCommit variable.

--oneline
This is a shorthand for "--pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit" used
together.

--encoding=<encoding>
The commit objects record the 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.

--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 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:

o a space instead of the T date/time delimiter

o a space between time and time zone

o 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 %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 similar to
--date=rfc2822, with a few exceptions:

o there is no comma after the day-of-week

o the time zone is omitted when the local time zone is used

--header
Print the contents of the commit in raw-format; each record is
separated with a NUL character.

--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:

o oneline

This is designed to be as compact as possible.

o short

commit <hash>
Author: <author>

o medium

commit <hash>
Author: <author>
Date: <author date>

o full

commit <hash>
Author: <author>
Commit: <committer>

o fuller

commit <hash>
Author: <author>
AuthorDate: <author date>
Commit: <committer>
CommitDate: <committer date>

o 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.

o email

From <hash> <date>
From: <author>
Date: <author date>
Subject: [PATCH] <title line>

o 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.

o format:<string>

The 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:

o Placeholders that expand to a single literal character:

%n
newline

%%
a raw %

%x00
print a byte from a hex code

o 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).

%<(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)

%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
author email local-part (the part before the @ sign)

%cL
author 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)

%d
ref names, like the --decorate option of git-log(1)

%D
ref names without the " (", ")" wrapping.

%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

%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:

o key=<K>: 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.

o only[=val]: select whether non-trailer lines from the
trailer block should be included. The only keyword may
optionally be followed by an equal sign and one of
true, on, yes to omit or false, off, no to show the
non-trailer lines. If option is given without value it
is enabled. If given multiple times the last value is
used.

o separator=<SEP>: specify a separator inserted between
trailer lines. When this option is not given each
trailer line is terminated with 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. If
separator option is given multiple times only the last
one is used. E.g., %(trailers:key=Ticket,separator=%x2C
) shows all trailer lines whose key is "Ticket"
separated by a comma and a space.

o unfold[=val]: make it behave as if interpret-trailer's
--unfold option was given. In same way as to for only
it can be followed by an equal sign and explicit value.
E.g., %(trailers:only,unfold=true) unfolds and shows
all trailer lines.

o valueonly[=val]: skip over the key part of the trailer
line and only show the value part. Also this optionally
allows explicit value.

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.

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.

o 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

GIT
Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.25.1 04/26/2023 GIT-REV-LIST(1)

git-rev-list

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