git rev-list [ --max-count=number ]
[ --skip=number ]
[ --max-age=timestamp ]
[ --min-age=timestamp ]
[ --sparse ]
[ --merges ]
[ --no-merges ]
[ --first-parent ]
[ --remove-empty ]
[ --full-history ]
[ --not ]
[ --all ]
[ --branches[=pattern] ]
[ --tags[=pattern] ]
[ --remotes[=pattern] ]
[ --glob=glob-pattern ]
[ --stdin ]
[ --quiet ]
[ --topo-order ]
[ --parents ]
[ --timestamp ]
[ --left-right ]
[ --cherry-pick ]
[ --encoding[=<encoding>] ]
[ --(author|committer|grep)=<pattern> ]
[ --regexp-ignore-case | -i ]
[ --extended-regexp | -E ]
[ --fixed-strings | -F ]
[ --date={local|relative|default|iso|rfc|short} ]
[ [--objects | --objects-edge] [ --unpacked ] ]
[ --pretty | --header ]
[ --bisect ]
[ --bisect-vars ]
[ --bisect-all ]
[ --merge ]
[ --reverse ]
[ --walk-reflogs ]
[ --no-walk ] [ --do-walk ]
<commit>... [ -- <paths>... ]
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.
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>
Note: you can specify the default pretty format in the repository configuration (see git-config(1)).
--abbrev-commit
This should make "--pretty=oneline" a whole lot more readable for people using 80-column terminals.
--oneline
--encoding[=<encoding>]
--no-notes, --show-notes[=<ref>]
With an optional argument, add this ref to the list of notes. The ref is taken to be in refs/notes/ if it is not qualified.
--[no-]standard-notes
--relative-date
--date={relative,local,default,iso,rfc,short,raw}
--date=relative shows dates relative to the current time, e.g. "2 hours ago".
--date=local shows timestamps in user's local timezone.
--date=iso (or --date=iso8601) shows timestamps in ISO 8601 format.
--date=rfc (or --date=rfc2822) shows timestamps in RFC 2822 format, often found in E-mail messages.
--date=short shows only date but not time, in YYYY-MM-DD format.
--date=raw shows the date in the internal raw git format %s %z format.
--date=default shows timestamps in the original timezone (either committer's or author's).
--header
--parents
--children
--timestamp
--left-right
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
This implies the --topo-order option by default, but the --date-order option may also be specified.
--count
Besides specifying a range of commits that should be listed using the special notations explained in the description, additional commit limiting may be applied.
-n number, --max-count=<number>
--skip=<number>
--since=<date>, --after=<date>
--until=<date>, --before=<date>
--max-age=<timestamp>, --min-age=<timestamp>
--author=<pattern>, --committer=<pattern>
--grep=<pattern>
--all-match
-i, --regexp-ignore-case
-E, --extended-regexp
-F, --fixed-strings
--remove-empty
--merges
--no-merges
--first-parent
--not
--all
--branches[=pattern]
--tags[=pattern]
--remotes[=pattern]
--glob=glob-pattern
--stdin
--quiet
--cherry-pick
For example, if you have two branches, A and B, a usual way to list all commits on only one side of them is with --left-right, like the example above in the description of that option. It however shows the commits that were cherry-picked from the other branch (for example, "3rd on b" may be cherry-picked from branch A). With this option, such pairs of commits are excluded from the output.
-g, --walk-reflogs
With --pretty format other than oneline (for obvious reasons), this causes the output to have two extra lines of information taken from the reflog. By default, commit@{Nth} notation is used in the output. When the starting commit is specified as commit@{now}, output also uses commit@{timestamp} notation instead. Under --pretty=oneline, the commit message is prefixed with this information on the same line. This option cannot be combined with --reverse. See also git-reflog(1).
--merge
--boundary
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>
--simplify-by-decoration
Note that extra commits can be shown to give a meaningful history.
The following options affect the way the simplification is performed:
Default mode
--full-history
--dense
--sparse
--simplify-merges
--ancestry-path
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
/ / / / /
I B C D E
\ / / / /
`-------------'
The horizontal line of history A---P is taken to be the first parent of each merge. The commits are:
I is the initial commit, in which foo exists with contents "asdf", and a file quux exists with contents "quux". Initial commits are compared to an empty tree, so I is !TREESAME.
B contains the same change as A. Its merge M is trivial and hence TREESAME to all parents.
C does not change foo, but its merge N changes it to "foobar", so it is not TREESAME to any parent.
D sets foo to "baz". Its merge O combines the strings from N and D to "foobarbaz"; i.e., it is not TREESAME to any parent.
E changes quux to "xyzzy", and its merge P combines the strings to "quux xyzzy". Despite appearing interesting, P is TREESAME to all parents.
rev-list walks backwards through history, including or excluding commits based on whether --full-history and/or parent rewriting (via --parents or --children) are used. The following settings are available.
Default mode
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
I A B N D O
P and M were excluded because they are TREESAME to a parent. E, C and B were all walked, but only B was !TREESAME, so the others do not appear.
Note that without parent rewriting, it is not really possible to talk about the parent/child relationships between the commits, so we show them disconnected.
--full-history with parent rewriting
Merges are always included. However, their parent list is rewritten: Along each parent, prune away commits that are not included themselves. This results in
.-A---M---N---O---P
/ / / / /
I B / D /
\ / / / /
`-------------'
Compare to --full-history without rewriting above. Note that E was pruned away because it is TREESAME, but the parent list of P was rewritten to contain E's parent I. The same happened for C and N. Note also that P was included despite being TREESAME.
In addition to the above settings, you can change whether TREESAME affects inclusion:
--dense
--sparse
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
Then simplify each commit 'C` to its replacement C' in the final history according to the following rules:
The effect of this is best shown by way of comparing to --full-history with parent rewriting. The example turns into:
.-A---M---N---O
/ / /
I B D
\ / /
`---------'
Note the major differences in N and P over --full-history:
N's parent list had I removed, because it is an ancestor of the other parent M. Still, N remained because it is !TREESAME.
P's parent list similarly had I removed. P was then removed completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME.
Finally, there is a fifth simplification mode available:
--ancestry-path
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).
--bisect
$ 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
--bisect-all
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.
By default, the commits are shown in reverse chronological order.
--topo-order
--date-order
--reverse
These options are mostly targeted for packing of git repositories.
--objects
--objects-edge
--unpacked
--no-walk
--do-walk
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.
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
<sha1> <title line>
This is designed to be as compact as possible.
short
commit <sha1> Author: <author>
<title line>
medium
commit <sha1> Author: <author> Date: <author date>
<title line>
<full commit message>
full
commit <sha1> Author: <author> Commit: <committer>
<title line>
<full commit message>
fuller
commit <sha1> Author: <author> AuthorDate: <author date> Commit: <committer> CommitDate: <committer date>
<title line>
<full commit message>
From <sha1> <date> From: <author> Date: <author date> Subject: [PATCH] <title line>
<full commit message>
raw
The raw format shows the entire commit exactly as stored in the commit object. Notably, the SHA1s are displayed in full, regardless of whether --abbrev or --no-abbrev are used, and parents information show the true parent commits, without taking grafts nor history simplification into account.
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:
%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))
%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 format
%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))
%cd: committer date
%cD: committer date, RFC2822 style
%cr: committer date, relative
%ct: committer date, UNIX timestamp
%ci: committer date, ISO 8601 format
%d: ref names, like the --decorate option of git-log(1)
%e: encoding
%s: subject
%f: sanitized subject line, suitable for a filename
%b: body
%B: raw body (unwrapped subject and body)
%N: commit notes
%gD: reflog selector, e.g., refs/stash@{1}
%gd: shortened reflog selector, e.g., stash@{1}
%gs: reflog subject
%Cred: switch color to red
%Cgreen: switch color to green
%Cblue: switch color to blue
%Creset: reset color
%C(...): color specification, as described in color.branch.* config option
%m: left, right or boundary mark
%n: newline
%%: a raw %
%x00: print a byte from a hex code
%w([<w>[,<i1>[,<i2>]]]): switch line wrapping, like the -w option of git-shortlog(1).
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 placeholder 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, line-feeds that immediately precede 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
Written by Linus Torvalds <m[blue]torvalds@osdl.orgm[][1]>
Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano, Jonas Fonseca and the git-list <m[blue]git@vger.kernel.orgm[][2]>.
Part of the git(1) suite