SYNOPSIS

git-log <option>…

DESCRIPTION

Shows the commit logs.

The command takes options applicable to the git-rev-list(1) command to control what is shown and how, and options applicable to the git-diff-tree(1) commands to control how the changes each commit introduces are shown.

This manual page describes only the most frequently used options.

OPTIONS

--pretty[=<format>]

Pretty print the contents of the commit logs in a given format, where <format> can be one of oneline, short, medium, full, fuller, email, raw and format:<string>. When left out the format default to medium.

--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.

-<n>

Limits the number of commits to show.

<since>..<until>

Show only commits between the named two commits. When either <since> or <until> is omitted, it defaults to HEAD, i.e. the tip of the current branch. For a more complete list of ways to spell <since> and <until>, see "SPECIFYING REVISIONS" section in git-rev-parse(1).

--first-parent

Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit. This option gives a better overview of the evolution of a particular branch.

-p

Show the change the commit introduces in a patch form.

-g, --walk-reflogs

Show commits as they were recorded in the reflog. The log contains a record about how the tip of a reference was changed. See also git-reflog(1).

--decorate

Print out the ref names of any commits that are shown.

<paths>…

Show only commits that affect the specified paths.

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 sha1s 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.

Here are some additional details for each format:

Examples

git log --no-merges

Show the whole commit history, but skip any merges

git log v2.6.12.. include/scsi drivers/scsi

Show all commits since version v2.6.12 that changed any file in the include/scsi or drivers/scsi subdirectories

git log --since="2 weeks ago" -- gitk

Show the changes during the last two weeks to the file gitk. The "--" is necessary to avoid confusion with the branch named gitk

git log -r --name-status release..test

Show the commits that are in the "test" branch but not yet in the "release" branch, along with the list of paths each commit modifies.

Discussion

At the core level, git is character encoding agnostic.

Although we encourage that the commit log messages are encoded in UTF-8, both the core and git Porcelain are designed not to force UTF-8 on projects. If all participants of a particular project find it more convenient to use legacy encodings, git does not forbid it. However, there are a few things to keep in mind.

  1. git-commit-tree (hence, git-commit which uses it) issues an warning if the commit log message given to it does not look like a valid UTF-8 string, unless you explicitly say your project uses a legacy encoding. The way to say this is to have i18n.commitencoding in .git/config file, like this:

    [i18n]
            commitencoding = ISO-8859-1

    Commit objects created with the above setting record the value of i18n.commitencoding in its encoding header. This is to help other people who look at them later. Lack of this header implies that the commit log message is encoded in UTF-8.

  2. git-log, git-show and friends looks at the encoding header of a commit object, and tries to re-code the log message into UTF-8 unless otherwise specified. You can specify the desired output encoding with i18n.logoutputencoding in .git/config file, like this:

    [i18n]
            logoutputencoding = ISO-8859-1

    If you do not have this configuration variable, the value of i18n.commitencoding is used instead.

Note that we deliberately chose not to re-code the commit log message when a commit is made to force UTF-8 at the commit object level, because re-coding to UTF-8 is not necessarily a reversible operation.

Author

Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

Documentation

Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.

GIT

Part of the git(7) suite