A better git log

http://coderwall.com/p/euwpig?i=3&p=1&t=git

by bitsweet • 14 years ago

337 72 14 years ago

snissn• 14 years ago

tig is cool too. It's an ncurses based interface for exploring git history. apt-get install tig; and then run tig; in any directory that's a git repo

jeybalachandran• 14 years ago

+1 for tig, you can also brew install tig

cbsmith• 14 years ago

magit does the right thing for "emacs users".

philsnow• 14 years ago

Came here to suggest tig; one nice feature about it is that if you're annotating a file in the "blob" view (IIRC), the annotation information streams in as tig walks the commit tree backwards. This can be nice in a repository with thousands of commits.

bostonvaulter2• 14 years ago

+1 for tig. tig blame is also excellent, you can easily drill down to see who changed a line. Plus tig is a great replacement for git log since it launches in around 0.25 seconds compared to 1+ seconds for gitk and other graphical viewers.

davidw2• 14 years ago

M-x vc-annotate does a nice 'blame', along with color coding to show the age of changes.

ngkabra• 14 years ago

I find myself using these aliases regularly:

    df = diff --color --color-words --abbrev
    st = status -s
    l = log --graph --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commig --decorate

There are a lot more at this stackoverflow thread: http://superuser.com/questions/169695/what-are-your-favorite...

mappu• 14 years ago

`git df' sounds like it should tell me how much space is free on all remote mirrors of the repo.

Is there a `git du' ?

Zr40• 14 years ago

Yes, there is: du .git

pyre• 14 years ago

From my .gitconfig:

    # --- LOGS ---
    ll   = "log --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit"
    lg   = log --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit --graph --decorate --date=relative
    lgt  = log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr)%Creset' --abbrev-commit --date=relative
    lgtt = log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr)%Creset' --abbrev-commit --date=relative

I almost never user "git lgt" or "git lgtt." Instead I mostly use "git ll", and sometimes "git lg", though if you're doing a lot of merging around, the graph can get a bit convoluted.

pbiggar2• 14 years ago

Is there anyway to get the short git status but still get the output that says "Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 6 commits."

gemma2• 14 years ago

status -sb

keporahg2• 14 years ago

Is there a way to make the filenames in a 'git diff' stand out/coloured? I always have trouble figuring out where one file's diff ends and the next one begins.

AncientPC• 14 years ago

  git diff --color

Or modify ~.gitconfig:

  [color]
  diff = auto

  [color "diff"]
    meta = yellow bold
    frag = magenta bold
    old = red bold
    new = green bold

gemma2• 14 years ago

My favorite: git diff --color-words=.

hhartz• 14 years ago

thanks! A minor improvement would be to put tree-ish at the end;

    log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset - %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset %C(yellow)%d%Creset' --abbrev-commit --

rachelbythebay• 14 years ago

This page looks rather surprising with Javascript disabled. It seems to be leaking all of the "behind the scenes" details which ultimately become the post, like this:

    Just type in: git log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset'

That seems ... suboptimal.

joshzayin• 14 years ago

I think that's just what you're supposed to type in.

(I see that too, with JS enabled, and if you view source you can see that that was intentional based on the > and <.)

mkl• 14 years ago

The final example with "-p" doesn't seem to work, because of the "--". That "--" shouldn't be needed most of the time, and can be manually added if you want to specify file names that clash with branch names, etc. Otherwise, this is really neat.

qznc• 14 years ago

Instead of hardcoding those colors, I'd suggest:

  git config --global color.ui "auto"

Now, this already gives you most of articles info:

  git log --decorate --graph --oneline

anaheim• 14 years ago

"Look, here's a pretty way to configure git! This can also be done in these 17 other ways, wheeeee! It's 2012 and the top article is how to configure colours in 'git log'"

Seriously, boffins. Stop posting this stuff already. Better techniques are nice, but good only if they're revolutionary (like that Light Table editor). We need more new, ground-breaking stuff and less arrangements of Linus's Lego bricks.

epaga• 14 years ago

"good only if revolutionary" sure would make for a sparse & boring HN front page...

I appreciate this tip (and upvoted it) as I hadn't thought of the idea before. Revolutionary? No. Helpful? Absolutely.

gioele2• 14 years ago

> "good only if revolutionary" sure would make for a sparse & boring HN front page...

Sparse yes, boring I don't think so.

dereferenced22• 14 years ago

agree 100%. the '5 minute' newscycle of tech blogs leads to needless repetition of dumb stuff.

dredmorbius• 14 years ago

Any news cycle tends to repetition of stuff.

There's the annual calendar of "news" stories pertaining to major holidays, sports events, and political cycles.

If you've lived a few years (or decades) in any particular area, you'll find a recycled set of "places to go, things to do, sights to see" articles.

If you've lived through a few economic cycles, there's a very predictable trend through boom, cusp, bust, downturn, recovery cycles (NB: still in the downturn).

News is cyclic. Not everyone knows everything. Reiterating the basics every so often is necessary.

The challenge isn't not doing it, but getting the balance right.

nobrains24• 14 years ago

Nice.

Why is the last -- needed? This restricts giving other wise optional flags to git log.. Can list last n commits for example.

drtse42• 14 years ago

A few slightly better aliases with graphs on the left:

lg50 = "!git log --graph --abbrev-commit --date=relative --pretty=format:'%x00%h%x00%s%x00%cd%x00%an%x00%d' | gawk -F '\\0' '{ printf \"%s\\033[31m%s\\033[0m %-50s \\033[32m%14s\\033[0m \\033[30;1m%s\\033[0m\\033[33m%s\\n\", $1, $2, gensub(/(.{49}).{2,}/, \"\\\\1…\",\"g\",$3), $4, $5, $6 }' | less -R"

lg80 = "!git log --graph --abbrev-commit --date=relative --pretty=format:'%x00%h%x00%s%x00%cd%x00%an%x00%d' | gawk -F '\\0' '{ printf \"%s\\033[31m%s\\033[0m %-80s \\033[32m%14s\\033[0m \\033[30;1m%s\\033[0m\\033[33m%s\\n\", $1, $2, gensub(/(.{79}).{2,}/, \"\\\\1…\",\"g\",$3), $4, $5, $6 }' | less -R"

Note: i've been using them for some time, i don't even remember who was the original source...

On an unrelated note, does someone remember how to add code sections? :)

dbaupp• 14 years ago

Try indenting by a few spaces (I think it is four).

saraid2162• 14 years ago

Two spaces.

insipid• 14 years ago

I got them from here: http://pyrtsa.posterous.com/aligning-your-git-logs (which also has the list-not-graph versions).

[Which is what I was going to comment, but you beat me to it.]

chmike• 14 years ago

When I use these the commit comment lines are not truncated. Is this the normal behavior ?

drtse42• 14 years ago

Sadly, yes..

shaggyfrog• 14 years ago

Your screenshots are JPEGs; they would look much better as PNGs.

danielweber2• 14 years ago

Also I should be able to click on the image, instead of the link below the image, to see it fullsize.

mise• 14 years ago

How do you keep track of such changes across machines? In a dotfiles git repository, and making a symbolic link to your git configuration stored there?

felixhummel• 14 years ago

That's exactly how I do it. https://github.com/felixhummel/configs#readme

graywh2• 14 years ago

I just use a ~/.git

orefalo• 14 years ago

This is not really new, for those looking into a smart, user friendly git client, try G2 - http://orefalo.github.com/g2/

gioele2• 14 years ago

Strange but true, the widespread `git lola` has not been mentioned yet.

  [alias]
    lol = log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit
    lola = log --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit --all

http://blog.kfish.org/2010/04/git-lola.html

sant0sk1• 14 years ago

Even simpler (git 1.7.7, YMMV)

    [alias]
      lol = log --graph --decorate --oneline
      lola = log --graph --decorate --oneline --all

danielweber2• 14 years ago

What's the options to make git show the files that changed in each diff?

jboland• 14 years ago

git log --name-status is useful

rpearl• 14 years ago

git log -p or git log --patch

anders0• 14 years ago

Apart from `-p` and `--name-status`, there’s also `--stat` for the `++++++++----` things for each file.

btown• 14 years ago

An open-source git client for OS X which I think is criminally underused is Laullón's fork of GitX at http://gitx.laullon.com/ ... it's a beautiful and full-featured interface that feels right at home in the GUI. Can't beat the price, and it's light-years ahead of GitHub for Mac.

josegonzalez• 14 years ago

SourceTree is what I use, but even that is falling apart at the size of our Git Repo. GitX just falls over for me.

pnathan• 14 years ago

I use SourceTree, but it is slow.

weaksauce• 14 years ago

I use it and it's quite good. Can't fully replace the shell though. One thing that I don't get is why it takes a few seconds (10 ish) to make a local branch.

dereferenced22• 14 years ago

wow, this is amazing. git log has options? and you can use them? who knew.

aguynamedben• 14 years ago

I use 'git h', which is very similar. It was gifted to me when I moved to SF.

(in ~/.gitconfig under the [alias] section...)

h = log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit --date=relative

https://img.skitch.com/20120619-c9xq67ysdbmrasmfgur6raba1d.p...

I'd love to see how stuff like this spreads. I just use git h because the person that gave it to me used that.

suchire• 14 years ago

A bit off topic: I like the font you're using on your console screenshot, but I'm having trouble narrowing down what it is. Do you mind telling us?

mcantor• 14 years ago

Looks like Inconsolata [1] to me. The slashes are set slightly higher than the pipe, the asterisk is vertically center-aligned (as opposed to super-positioned as with Consolas, Monaco, Vera Sans Mono and others), a distinctive upward curve on its lowercase 'y', and it has a looptail lowercase 'g'.

[1] http://levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html

danso• 14 years ago

Does anyone have a setup where the git log (perhaps with grep) is synced with their public changelog file?

sathishmanohar2• 14 years ago

My only complaint is, I write long commit messages, since the commit messages are shown in single line, it overflows the viewing area. so, if there are linebreaks for longer git messages, it would be awesome.

jherdman• 14 years ago

Git best practices say the first line in your commit message should be no more than 50 characters. Subsequent lines should be wrapped at 80 characters. See http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messa...

sathishmanohar2• 14 years ago

I've been using multiple lines in my log messages, but didn't know about second blank line.

I tried as per pilgrim689's comment, Now everything is fine with --oneline argument.

Thanks.

pilgrim689• 14 years ago

Long commit messages are good, but if you want them to display nicely in short logs, enter them the way git and linux kernel commit messages do:

then `git log --oneline` displays the 1-liners perfectly.

kschults3• 14 years ago

Is there a way to limit this to the most recent N (either hard-coded or as an input) entries? It's a bit slow to load when it has to load all of the history ever, and I usually only care about at most the last couple dozen commits.

jeltz• 14 years ago

The built in automatic paging in git already makes sure it does not have to load all history. And --graph is what makes it slow. Adding a limit with git lg -10 seems to take about the same time as with no limit at all.

kschults3• 14 years ago

Ah, thanks for the correction.

Knowing that, this doesn't really matter, but "git lg -10" produces no output at all for me.

dacort• 14 years ago

I also find it very helpful to spiff up my prompt when changing into a git repo:

http://railstips.org/blog/archives/2009/02/02/bedazzle-your-...

graywh2• 14 years ago

There's a __git_ps1 function that's included with the git bash completion script (edit: it works with zsh, too -- the __git_ps1 function and the completion).

lobo_tuerto• 14 years ago

Tried it, for some reason isn't working on my system.

Then found this: http://volnitsky.com/project/git-prompt/ and I'm loving it!

gilini• 14 years ago

Hm, I think something's missing from the post... Oh, yes, proper attribution.

I saw this months ago in a 2010 blog post: http://www.jukie.net/bart/blog/pimping-out-git-log

It's the exact same alias, sans "--date=relative".

The guy from jukie.net also shares his entire .gitconfig, I built mine from it and highly recommend at least taking a peek: http://www.jukie.net/~bart/conf/gitconfig

xyzzyb• 14 years ago

If you like this you should already be subscribed to Destroy All Software: outstanding value for the dollar. I actually prefer Gary's "git r" and "git l" to this.

If you really want to skip on the awesomeness that is DAS, he has his dotfiles up on github that are chock full of great tidbits: https://github.com/garybernhardt/dotfiles

kgc• 14 years ago

Many people don't realize there's a graphical interface built into git: gitk

A better git log

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