To control which revisions to show, gitk supports most options
applicable to the git rev-list command. It also supports a few
options applicable to the git diff-* commands to control how the
changes each commit introduces are shown. Finally, it supports
some gitk-specific options.
gitk generally only understands options with arguments in the
sticked form (see gitcli(7)) due to limitations in the
command-line parser.
rev-list options and arguments
This manual page describes only the most frequently used options.
See git-rev-list(1) for a complete list.
--all
Show all refs (branches, tags, etc.).
--branches[=<pattern>], --tags[=<pattern>], --remotes[=<pattern>]
Pretend as if all the branches (tags, remote branches, resp.)
are listed on the command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is
given, limit refs to ones matching given shell glob. If
pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.
--since=<date>
Show commits more recent than a specific date.
--until=<date>
Show commits older than a specific date.
--date-order
Sort commits by date when possible.
--merge
After an attempt to merge stops with conflicts, show the
commits on the history between two branches (i.e. the HEAD
and the MERGE_HEAD) that modify the conflicted files and do
not exist on all the heads being merged.
--left-right
Mark which side of a symmetric difference a commit is
reachable from. Commits from the left side are prefixed with
a < symbol and those from the right with a > symbol.
--full-history
When filtering history with <path>..., does not prune some
history. (See "History simplification" in git-log(1) for a
more detailed explanation.)
--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. (See "History
simplification" in git-log(1) for a more detailed
explanation.)
--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. (See "History
simplification" in git-log(1) for a more detailed
explanation.)
-L<start>,<end>:<file>, -L:<funcname>:<file>
Trace the evolution of the line range given by <start>,<end>,
or by the function name regex <funcname>, within the <file>.
You may not give any pathspec limiters. This is currently
limited to a walk starting from a single revision, i.e., you
may only give zero or one positive revision arguments, and
<start> and <end> (or <funcname>) must exist in the starting
revision. You can specify this option more than once. Implies
--patch. Patch output can be suppressed using --no-patch, but
other diff formats (namely --raw, --numstat, --shortstat,
--dirstat, --summary, --name-only, --name-status, --check)
are not currently implemented.
<start> and <end> can take one of these forms:
• number
If <start> or <end> is a number, it specifies an absolute
line number (lines count from 1).
• /regex/
This form will use the first line matching the given
POSIX regex. If <start> is a regex, it will search from
the end of the previous -L range, if any, otherwise from
the start of file. If <start> is ^/regex/, it will search
from the start of file. If <end> is a regex, it will
search starting at the line given by <start>.
• +offset or -offset
This is only valid for <end> and will specify a number of
lines before or after the line given by <start>.
If :<funcname> is given in place of <start> and <end>, it is
a regular expression that denotes the range from the first
funcname line that matches <funcname>, up to the next
funcname line. :<funcname> searches from the end of the
previous -L range, if any, otherwise from the start of file.
^:<funcname> searches from the start of file. The function
names are determined in the same way as git diff works out
patch hunk headers (see Defining a custom hunk-header in
gitattributes(5)).
<revision range>
Limit the revisions to show. This can be either a single
revision meaning show from the given revision and back, or it
can be a range in the form "<from>..<to>" to show all
revisions between <from> and back to <to>. Note, more
advanced revision selection can be applied. For a more
complete list of ways to spell object names, see
gitrevisions(7).
<path>...
Limit commits to the ones touching files in the given paths.
Note, to avoid ambiguity with respect to revision names use
"--" to separate the paths from any preceding options.
gitk-specific options
--argscmd=<command>
Command to be run each time gitk has to determine the
revision range to show. The command is expected to print on
its standard output a list of additional revisions to be
shown, one per line. Use this instead of explicitly
specifying a <revision range> if the set of commits to show
may vary between refreshes.
--select-commit=<ref>
Select the specified commit after loading the graph. Default
behavior is equivalent to specifying --select-commit=HEAD.
