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.
--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.
--disk-usage
Suppress normal output; instead, print the sum of the bytes
used for on-disk storage by the selected commits or objects.
This is equivalent to piping the output into git cat-file
--batch-check='%(objectsize:disk)', except that it runs much
faster (especially with --use-bitmap-index). See the CAVEATS
section in git-cat-file(1) for the limitations of what
"on-disk storage" means.
--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)
--show-pulls
Include all commits from the default mode, but also any merge
commits that are not TREESAME to the first parent but are
TREESAME to a later parent. This mode is helpful for showing
the merge commits that "first introduced" a change to a
branch.
--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:
• 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.
• In A, foo contains just 'foo'.
• 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'. P is TREESAME to O, but not to E.
• 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:
• Set C' to C.
• 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.
• 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:
• 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.
• 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.
There is another 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
Before discussing another option, --show-pulls, we need to create
a new example history.
A common problem users face when looking at simplified history is
that a commit they know changed a file somehow does not appear in
the file's simplified history. Let's demonstrate a new example
and show how options such as --full-history and --simplify-merges
works in that case:
.-A---M-----C--N---O---P
/ / \ \ \/ / /
I B \ R-'`-Z' /
\ / \/ /
\ / /\ /
`---X--' `---Y--'
For this example, suppose I created file.txt which was modified
by A, B, and X in different ways. The single-parent commits C, Z,
and Y do not change file.txt. The merge commit M was created by
resolving the merge conflict to include both changes from A and B
and hence is not TREESAME to either. The merge commit R, however,
was created by ignoring the contents of file.txt at M and taking
only the contents of file.txt at X. Hence, R is TREESAME to X but
not M. Finally, the natural merge resolution to create N is to
take the contents of file.txt at R, so N is TREESAME to R but not
C. The merge commits O and P are TREESAME to their first parents,
but not to their second parents, Z and Y respectively.
When using the default mode, N and R both have a TREESAME parent,
so those edges are walked and the others are ignored. The
resulting history graph is:
I---X
When using --full-history, Git walks every edge. This will
discover the commits A and B and the merge M, but also will
reveal the merge commits O and P. With parent rewriting, the
resulting graph is:
.-A---M--------N---O---P
/ / \ \ \/ / /
I B \ R-'`--' /
\ / \/ /
\ / /\ /
`---X--' `------'
Here, the merge commits O and P contribute extra noise, as they
did not actually contribute a change to file.txt. They only
merged a topic that was based on an older version of file.txt.
This is a common issue in repositories using a workflow where
many contributors work in parallel and merge their topic branches
along a single trunk: manu unrelated merges appear in the
--full-history results.
When using the --simplify-merges option, the commits O and P
disappear from the results. This is because the rewritten second
parents of O and P are reachable from their first parents. Those
edges are removed and then the commits look like single-parent
commits that are TREESAME to their parent. This also happens to
the commit N, resulting in a history view as follows:
.-A---M--.
/ / \
I B R
\ / /
\ / /
`---X--'
In this view, we see all of the important single-parent changes
from A, B, and X. We also see the carefully-resolved merge M and
the not-so-carefully-resolved merge R. This is usually enough
information to determine why the commits A and B "disappeared"
from history in the default view. However, there are a few issues
with this approach.
The first issue is performance. Unlike any previous option, the
--simplify-merges option requires walking the entire commit
history before returning a single result. This can make the
option difficult to use for very large repositories.
The second issue is one of auditing. When many contributors are
working on the same repository, it is important which merge
commits introduced a change into an important branch. The
problematic merge R above is not likely to be the merge commit
that was used to merge into an important branch. Instead, the
merge N was used to merge R and X into the important branch. This
commit may have information about why the change X came to
override the changes from A and B in its commit message.
--show-pulls
In addition to the commits shown in the default history, show
each merge commit that is not TREESAME to its first parent
but is TREESAME to a later parent.
When a merge commit is included by --show-pulls, the merge is
treated as if it "pulled" the change from another branch.
When using --show-pulls on this example (and no other
options) the resulting graph is:
I---X---R---N
Here, the merge commits R and N are included because they
pulled the commits X and R into the base branch,
respectively. These merges are the reason the commits A and B
do not appear in the default history.
When --show-pulls is paired with --simplify-merges, the graph
includes all of the necessary information:
.-A---M--. N
/ / \ /
I B R
\ / /
\ / /
`---X--'
Notice that since M is reachable from R, the edge from N to M
was simplified away. However, N still appears in the history
as an important commit because it "pulled" the change R into
the main branch.
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.
--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=object:type=(tag|commit|tree|blob) omits
all objects which are not of the requested type.
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
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-provided-objects
Filter the list of explicitly provided objects, which would
otherwise always be printed even if they did not match any of
the filters. Only useful with --filter=.
--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 a prefix that names the object uniquely.
"--abbrev=<n>" (which also modifies diff output, if it is
displayed) option can be used to specify the minimum length
of the prefix.
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, either explicit or implied by other
options 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:
• a space instead of the T date/time delimiter
• a space between time and time zone
• 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:
• there is no comma after the day-of-week
• 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.
--no-commit-header
Suppress the header line containing "commit" and the object
ID printed before the specified format. This has no effect on
the built-in formats; only custom formats are affected.
--commit-header
Overrides a previous --no-commit-header.
--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.
