GIT-REV-LIST(1)
🌸 NAME 🌸
Okay so this is git-rev-list from the Git Manual, page GIT-REV-LIST(1) — Lists commit objects in reverse chronological order. Periodt. 💅
✨ SYNOPSIS ✨
git rev-list [<options>] <commit>... [--] [<path>...]🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋
Bestie, git rev-list lists commits that are reachable by following the parent links from the commit(s) you give it — but it excludes commits reachable from the one(s) you give with a ^ in front. The output is given in reverse chronological order by default. No cap. 🫶
Think of it like a set operation, fr fr. Commits reachable from any of the commits given on the command line form a set, 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. ✨
So this command:
$ git rev-list foo bar ^bazmeans "list all the commits which are reachable from foo or bar, but not from baz". Iconic behavior honestly. 😌
A special notation <commit1>..<commit2> can be used as a short-hand for ^<commit1> <commit2>. For example, either of these may be used interchangeably:
$ git rev-list origin..HEAD
$ git rev-list HEAD ^originAnother special notation is <commit1>...<commit2> which is useful for merges. The resulting set of commits is the symmetric difference between the two operands. These two commands are equivalent:
$ git rev-list A B --not $(git merge-base --all A B)
$ git rev-list A...Brev-list is an 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 enable it to be used by commands as different as git bisect and git repack. She’s versatile, she’s everywhere, she’s main character energy. 👑🔥
💅 OPTIONS 💅
🎀 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. Important vibe check, bestie. 🫶
-<number>,-n <number>,--max-count=<number>— Limit the output to the first<number>commits that would be shown. 💅--max-count-oldest=<number>— Limit the output to the last<number>commits that would be shown. 🎀--skip=<number>— Skip<number>commits before starting to show the commit output. Bye bestie, we’re skipping ahead. 🦋--since=<date>,--after=<date>— Show commits more recent than<date>. As a special case,todaymeans the last midnight. ⏰--since-as-filter=<date>— Show all commits more recent than<date>. This visits all commits in the range, rather than stopping at the first commit which is older than<date>. She’s thorough, okay?? 💀--until=<date>,--before=<date>— Show commits older than<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<pattern>regular expression. With more than one--author=<pattern>, commits whose author matches any of the<pattern>are chosen (similarly for multiple--committer=<pattern>). Matching multiple patterns = any of them, bestie. 🌸--grep-reflog=<pattern>— Limit the commits output to ones with reflog entries that match the<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-reflogsis in use. ⚠️--grep=<pattern>— Limit the commits output to ones with a log message that matches the<pattern>regular expression. With more than one--grep=<pattern>, commits whose message matches any of the<pattern>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. All of them. No half-vibes. 💯--invert-grep— Limit the commits output to ones with a log message that do not match the<pattern>specified with--grep=<pattern>. Flip the vibe. 🙈-i,--regexp-ignore-case— Match the regular expression limiting patterns without regard to letter case. Case? Never heard of her. 💅--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. Upgrade era. 🦋-F,--fixed-strings— Consider the limiting patterns to be fixed strings (don’t interpret pattern as a regular expression). Just literal bestie behavior. 🎀-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. 😭💀 Dramatic but accurate.--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=1is the same as--no-merges,--min-parents=2is the same as--merges.--max-parents=0gives all root commits and--min-parents=3all octopus merges. 🐙--no-min-parentsand--no-max-parentsreset 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— When finding commits to include, 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. First parent only, bestie. 🫶--exclude-first-parent-only— When finding commits to exclude (with a^), follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit. This can be used to find the set of changes in a topic branch from the point where it diverged from the remote branch, given that arbitrary merges can be valid topic branch changes. Exclude-vibe first-parent edition. 🦋--maximal-only— Restrict the output commits to be those that are not reachable from any other commits in the revision range. Only the maximal ones, queen behavior. 👑--not— Reverses the meaning of the^prefix (or lack thereof) for all following revision specifiers, up to the next--not. When used on the command line before--stdin, the revisions passed through stdin will not be affected by it. Conversely, when passed via standard input, the revisions passed on the command line will not be affected by it. Sneaky little scope thing, iykyk. 💅--all— Pretend as if all the refs inrefs/, along withHEAD, are listed on the command line as<commit>. All of them. 🌈--branches[=<pattern>]— Pretend as if all the refs inrefs/headsare 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. Branch besties only. 🌸--tags[=<pattern>]— Pretend as if all the refs inrefs/tagsare 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. Tagged and slaying. 🎀--remotes[=<pattern>]— Pretend as if all the refs inrefs/remotesare 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. Remote-tracking branch era. 🌍--glob=<glob-pattern>— Pretend as if all the refs matching shell glob<glob-pattern>are listed on the command line as<commit>. Leadingrefs/is automatically prepended if missing. If pattern lacks?,*, or[,/*at the end is implied. Globby girly. 🫧--exclude=<glob-pattern>— Do not include refs matching<glob-pattern>that the next--all,--branches,--tags,--remotes, or--globwould otherwise consider. Repetitions of this option accumulate exclusion patterns up to the next--all,--branches,--tags,--remotes, or--globoption (other options or arguments do not clear accumulated patterns). The patterns given should not begin withrefs/heads,refs/tags, orrefs/remoteswhen applied to--branches,--tags, or--remotes, respectively, and they must begin withrefs/when applied to--globor--all. If a trailing/*is intended, it must be given explicitly. Exclusion era, no accidental vibes. 🚫✨--exclude-hidden=(fetch|receive|uploadpack)— Do not include refs that would be hidden bygit-fetch,git-receive-packorgit-upload-packby consulting the appropriatefetch.hideRefs,receive.hideRefsoruploadpack.hideRefsconfiguration along withtransfer.hideRefs(seegit-config(1)). This option affects the next pseudo-ref option--allor--globand is cleared after processing them. Hidden-ref filter behavior, bestie. 🙈--reflog— Pretend as if all objects mentioned by reflogs are listed on the command line as<commit>. Reflog girlies rise. 🕰️--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 inobjects/info/alternates. The set of included objects may be modified bycore.alternateRefsCommand, etc. Seegit-config(1). Alternate refs, alternate vibes. 🌀--single-worktree— By default, all working trees will be examined by the following options when there are more than one (seegit-worktree(1)):--all,--reflogand--indexed-objects. This option forces them to examine the current working tree only. One worktree at a time, please. 🌱--ignore-missing— Upon seeing an invalid object name in the input, pretend as if the bad input was not given. Ignore and move on, periodt. 💅--stdin— okay so besides the args you already typed on the command line, this also reads them from standard input 💅. It takes commits and pseudo-options like--alland--glob=. The moment it sees a--separator, everything after that is treated as paths and used to narrow down the result. One thing to watch: flags like--notthat get read via stdin only count for arguments passed the same way — they will not affect any command-line arguments that come after them 🫶.--quiet— prints literally nothing to stdout, bestie. The whole point of this one is so the caller can just check the exit status and find out whether a range of objects is fully connected (or isn't) 👀. It's faster than piping stdout to/dev/null, because the output never has to be formatted at all. Efficiency slay.--disk-usage,--disk-usage=human— suppresses the normal output and instead prints the sum of bytes used for on-disk storage by the selected commits or objects 🔥. This is basically like piping the output intogit cat-file --batch-check='%(objectsize:disk)', except it runs so much faster (especially with--use-bitmap-index). Heads up tho — check the CAVEATS section ingit-cat-file(1)for the limits of what "on-disk storage" even means 🙈. With the optional valuehuman, the on-disk storage size gets shown as a human-readable string (e.g.12.24 Kib,3.50 Mib) ✨.--cherry-mark— like--cherry-pick(peep below 👇) but it marks equivalent commits with=instead of omitting them, and the inequivalent ones with+🎀.--cherry-pick— omits any commit that introduces the same change as another commit on the "other side" when your commit set is limited with symmetric difference. So say you've got two branches,AandB— the usual way to list all commits on just one side is--left-right(example lives down in the--left-rightdescription). But that also shows the commits that were cherry-picked from the other branch (like, "3rd on b" might be cherry-picked from branch A 😭). With this option, those matching pairs get excluded from the output entirely. Chef's kiss.--left-only,--right-only— list only the commits on the respective side of a symmetric difference, i.e. only the ones that--left-rightwould mark<or>, respectively 💫. For example,--cherry-pick --right-only A...Bomits the commits fromBthat are inA, or that are patch-equivalent to a commit inA. In other words, this lists the+commits fromgit cherry A B. Being precise about it:--cherry-pick --right-only --no-mergesgives you the exact list 👑--cherry— a synonym for--right-only --cherry-mark --no-merges🍒. Handy when you wanna limit output to the commits on our side and mark the ones that have been applied to the other side of a forked history withgit log --cherry upstream...mybranch, similar togit cherry upstream mybranch.-g,--walk-reflogs— instead of walking the commit ancestry chain, this walks reflog entries from the most recent one down to the older ones 🦋. When you use this option you cannot specify commits to exclude — meaning the^<commit>,<commit1>..<commit2>, and<commit1>...<commit2>notations are off the table.
With a --pretty format other than oneline and reference (for obvious reasons 💀), this causes the output to have two extra lines of info taken from the reflog. The reflog designator in the output may show up as ref@{<Nth>} (where <Nth> is the reverse-chronological index in the reflog) or as ref@{<timestamp>} (with the <timestamp> for that entry) — depends on a few rules:
- If the starting point is specified as
ref@{<Nth>}, show the index format. - If the starting point was specified as
ref@{now}, show the timestamp format. - If neither was used, but
--datewas given on the command line, show the timestamp in the format requested by--date. - Otherwise, show the index format.
Under --pretty=oneline, the commit message gets prefixed with this info on the same line. This option cannot be combined with --reverse. Also see git-reflog(1) 📖.
Under --pretty=reference, this information will not be shown at all 🙅♀️.
--merge— shows commits touching conflicted paths in the rangeHEAD...<other>, where<other>is the first existing pseudoref inMERGE_HEAD,CHERRY_PICK_HEAD,REVERT_HEADorREBASE_HEAD🌈. Only works when the index has unmerged entries. Use this to surface the relevant commits while you're resolving conflicts from a 3-way merge — genuinely so useful 😤.--boundary— outputs the excluded boundary commits, and boundary commits get prefixed with-✨.--use-bitmap-index— tries to speed up the traversal using the pack bitmap index (if one's available) ⚡. Note that when traversing with--objects, trees and blobs will not have their associated path printed.--progress=<header>— shows progress reports on stderr as objects are considered 📊. The<header>text gets printed with every progress update.-z— instead of being newline-delimited, each outputted object and its accompanying metadata is delimited using NUL bytes 🫶. Output looks like this:
<OID> NUL [<token>=<value> NUL]...Extra object metadata — stuff like object paths or boundary objects — is printed using the <token>=<value> form. Token values print as-is, with no encoding or truncation whatsoever. An OID entry never contains a = character, which is why it can signal the start of a new object record 💅. Examples:
<OID> NUL
<OID> NUL path=<path> NUL
<OID> NUL boundary=yes NUL
<OID> NUL missing=yes NUL [<token>=<value> NUL]...This mode is only compatible with the --objects, --boundary, and --missing output options. Don't try to mix and match fr.
🌸 History Simplification 🌸
Sometimes you only care about parts of the history — like, the commits modifying one particular <path> 👀. But there are two separate parts to History Simplification: one part is selecting the commits, and the other part is how to do it, because there are various strategies to simplify the history. Keeping those two straight is the whole vibe check.
The following options select the commits to be shown:
<paths>— commits modifying the given<paths>are selected 🎯.--simplify-by-decoration— commits that are referred to by some branch or tag are selected 🏷️.
Note that extra commits can be shown to give a meaningful history — that's not a bug, it's the point ✨.
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— includes 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 a lifesaver 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— an additional option to--full-historythat removes some needless merges from the resulting history, since there are no selected commits contributing to this merge ✂️.--ancestry-path[=<commit>]— when you give a range of commits to display (e.g.<commit1>..<commit2>or<commit2> ^<commit1>) and a commit<commit>in that range, only display commits in that range that are ancestors of<commit>, descendants of<commit>, or<commit>itself 🧬. If no commit is specified, it uses<commit1>(the excluded part of the range) as<commit>. Can be passed multiple times — if so, a commit is included if it's any of the commits given, or if it's an ancestor or descendant of one of them.
A more detailed explanation follows 👇 (grab a snack, bestie).
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're filtering for a file foo in this commit graph:
.-A---M---N---O---P---Q
/ / / / / /
I B C D E Y
\ / / / / /
`-------------' XThe horizontal line of history A---Q is taken to be the first parent of each merge. The commits are:
Iis the initial commit, in whichfooexists with contentsasdf, and a filequuxexists with contentsquux. Initial commits are compared to an empty tree, soIis !TREESAME 🌱.- In
A,foocontains justfoo. Bcontains the same change asA. Its mergeMis trivial and hence TREESAME to all parents.Cdoes not changefoo, but its mergeNchanges it tofoobar, so it is not TREESAME to any parent.Dsetsfootobaz. Its mergeOcombines the strings fromNandDtofoobarbaz; i.e., it is not TREESAME to any parent.Echangesquuxtoxyzzy, and its mergePcombines the strings toquux xyzzy.Pis TREESAME toO, but not toE.Xis an independent root commit that added a new fileside, andYmodified it.Yis TREESAME toX. Its mergeQaddedsidetoP, andQis TREESAME toP, but not toY.
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---------DNote 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
Okay so bestie, this mode is the default with exactly one plot twist: it always follows all parents of a merge, even if that merge is TREESAME to one of them. Even when more than one side of the merge has commits that are included, that does not mean the merge itself is included! In the example, we get:
I A B N D O P QM 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: 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'toC. - Replace each parent
PofC'with its simplificationP'. 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 hadIremoved, because it is an ancestor of the other parentM. Still,Nremained because it is!TREESAME.P’s parent list similarly hadIremoved.Pwas then removed completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME.Q’s parent list hadYsimplified toX.Xwas then removed, because it was a TREESAME root.Qwas then removed completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME.
There is another simplification mode available:
--ancestry-path[=<commit>]
Limit the displayed commits to those which are an ancestor of <commit>, or which are a descendant of <commit>, or are <commit> itself.
As an example use case, consider the following commit history:
D---E-------F
/ \ \
B---C---G---H---I---J
/ \
A-------K---------------L--MA 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--MWe can also use --ancestry-path=D instead of --ancestry-path which means the same thing when applied to the D..M range but is just more explicit.
If we instead are interested in a given topic within this range, and all commits affected by that topic, we may only want to view the subset of D..M which contain that topic in their ancestry path. So, using --ancestry-path=H D..M for example would result in:
E
\
C---G---H---I---J
\
L--MWhereas --ancestry-path=K D..M would result in:
K---------------L--MBefore 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---XWhen 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: many 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---NHere, 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--'So like, notice how M is reachable from R? That means the edge from N to M got simplified away. But N still shows up in the history as a whole important commit, because it literally "pulled" the change R into the main branch. ✨
The --simplify-by-decoration option lets you see only the big-picture ~vibes~ of your history topology, by omitting commits that aren't referenced by tags. A commit gets marked as !TREESAME (which, bestie, means it's kept after the history simplification rules we just described) if (1) it's referenced by tags, or (2) it changes the contents of the paths you gave on the command line. Every other commit is marked TREESAME (so it's subject to being simplified away). 🎀
🌸 Bisection Helpers 🌸
--bisect— limits the output to exactly one commit object that's roughly halfway between the included and excluded commits. Heads up though: the bad bisection refrefs/bisect/badgets added to the included commits (if it exists), and the good bisection refsrefs/bisect/good-*get added to the excluded commits (if they exist). So like, supposing there are no refs sitting inrefs/bisect/, and this:
$ git rev-list --bisect foo ^bar ^bazoutputs midpoint, then the output of these two commands:
$ git rev-list foo ^midpoint
$ git rev-list midpoint ^bar ^bazwould be roughly the same length. Which is iconic, because it means finding the change that introduces a regression is just a binary search: keep generating and testing new midpoints until the commit chain is down to length one. 🧚
--bisect-vars— this calculates the exact same thing as--bisect, except refs inrefs/bisect/are not used, and except it outputs text that's ready to beeval'ed by the shell. Those lines assign the name of the midpoint revision to the variablebisect_rev, the expected number of commits to be tested afterbisect_revis tested tobisect_nr, the expected number of commits to be tested ifbisect_revturns out to be good tobisect_good, the expected number of commits to be tested ifbisect_revturns out to be bad tobisect_bad, and the number of commits we're bisecting right now tobisect_all. lowkey so much info in one flag 💅--bisect-all— outputs all the commit objects between the included and excluded commits, ordered by their distance to the included and excluded commits. Refs inrefs/bisect/are not used. The one farthest from them is displayed first. (Fun fact: that's the only one--bisectdisplays.) This is genuinely so useful, because it makes it easy to pick a good commit to test when you want to avoid testing some of them for some reason — like they might not compile, for example. 😭 This option can also be used along with--bisect-vars; in that case, after all the sorted commit objects, you'll get the same text as if--bisect-varshad been used all by itself.
🦋 Commit Ordering 🦋
By default, commits are shown in reverse chronological order. classic.
--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. The way that this one works, okay, picture 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'd show 8 6 5 3 7 4 2 1 (or 8 7 4 2 6 5 3 1) — some older commits get shown before newer ones specifically to avoid showing the commits from two parallel development tracks all mixed together. periodt. ✨
--reverse— output the commits chosen to be shown (peep the Commit Limiting section above) in reverse order. Cannot be combined with--walk-reflogs. 🚫
💜 Object Traversal 💜
These options are mostly targeted at packing Git repositories, iykyk.
--objects— print the object IDs of any object referenced by the listed commits. So--objects foo ^barmeans "send me all object IDs which I need to download if I have the commit objectbarbut notfoo". See also--object-namesbelow. 🫶--in-commit-order— print tree and blob ids in order of the commits. The tree and blob ids get printed after they're first referenced by a commit.--objects-edge— similar to--objects, but it also prints the IDs of excluded commits prefixed with a-character.git-pack-objects(1)uses this to build a "thin" pack, which records objects in deltified form based on objects contained in those excluded commits, so it reduces network traffic. slay for bandwidth 🌈--objects-edge-aggressive— similar to--objects-edge, but it tries harder to find excluded commits at the cost of increased time. This one gets used instead of--objects-edgeto 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--objectstoo. 💡--unpacked— only useful with--objects; prints the object IDs that are not in packs.--object-names— only useful with--objects; prints the names of the object IDs that are found. This is the default behavior. Note that the "name" of each object is ambiguous, and it's mostly intended as a hint for packing objects. In particular: no distinction is made between the names of tags, trees, and blobs; path names may be modified to remove newlines; and if an object would appear multiple times with different names, only one name is shown. 🙈--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 lets the output be more easily parsed by commands such asgit-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:noneomits all blobs. - The form
--filter=blob:limit=<n>[kmg]omits blobs of size at least n bytes or units. n may be zero. The suffixesk,m, andgcan be used to name units in KiB, MiB, or GiB. For example,blob:limit=1kis the same asblob:limit=1024. - The form
--filter=object:type=(tag|commit|tree|blob)omits all objects which are not of the requested type. Note that explicitly provided objects ignore filters and are always printed, unless--filter-provided-objectsis also specified. - 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>(it's the minimum depth if an object is located at multiple depths in the commits traversed).<depth>=0will not include any trees or blobs unless they're included explicitly on the command line (or standard input when--stdinis used).<depth>=1will include only the tree and blobs which are referenced directly by a commit reachable from<commit>or an explicitly-given object.<depth>=2is like<depth>=1while also including trees and blobs one more level removed from an explicitly-given commit or tree.
- The form
Heads up bestie: the form --filter=sparse:path=<path> that wants to read from an arbitrary path on the filesystem has been dropped for security reasons. 💀 Not coming back.
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 combine several filters, but honestly this is harder than just repeating the --filter flag and it's 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. cute.
--no-filter— turns off any previous--filter=argument.--filter-provided-objects— filters the list of explicitly provided objects, which would otherwise always be printed even if they didn't 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. It specifies how missing objects are handled. ✨- The form
--missing=errorrequests thatrev-liststop with an error if a missing object is encountered. This is the default action. - The form
--missing=allow-anywill allow object traversal to continue if a missing object is encountered. Missing objects will silently be omitted from the results. - The form
--missing=allow-promisoris likeallow-any, but will only allow object traversal to continue for EXPECTED promisor missing objects. Unexpected missing objects will raise an error. - The form
--missing=printis likeallow-any, but will also print a list of the missing objects. Object IDs are prefixed with a?character. - The form
--missing=print-infois likeprint, but will also print additional information about the missing object inferred from its containing object. The information is all printed on the same line with the missing object ID, in the form:?<oid> [<token>=<value>]....The<token>=<value>pairs containing additional information are separated from each other by a SP. The value is encoded in a token-specific fashion, but SP or LF contained in value are always expected to be represented in such a way that the resulting encoded value doesn't have either of these two problematic bytes. Each<token>=<value>may be one of the following:
- The form
- The
path=<path>shows the path of the missing object, inferred from a containing object. If a path has SP or special characters in it, it gets wrapped in double-quotes, C style, as needed. 🎀 - The
type=<type>shows the type of the missing object, also inferred from a containing object.
If some of the tips you passed to the traversal are missing, they get treated as missing too, and the traversal just ignores them. But if we literally can't get their Object ID? Error. Raised. Done. 😭
--missing-only— okay so when you pair this with--missing=printor--missing=print-info, it suppresses all output for present objects and prints only the missing ones. The--missing=format you picked is preserved (so--missing=print-infostill emits itspath=/type=fields), but the leading?prefix that the non--zforms use is omitted. Why do you care? Because it's for scripting, bestie — a simpler and faster alternative to post-processing the output of--missing=print. 💅
This option is incompatible with --count and --disk-usage. And it is an error to use --missing-only without --missing=print or --missing=print-info. So don't.
--exclude-promisor-objects— (for internal use only, so don't come for me 🙈) Prefilter object traversal at the promisor boundary. This is used with partial clone. And ngl it's stronger than--missing=allow-promisor, because it actually limits the traversal instead of just silencing errors about missing objects. Big difference.--no-walk[=(sorted|unsorted)]— only show the given commits, don't traverse their ancestors at all. Has no effect if you specify a range. If you give the argumentunsorted, the commits are shown in the order they were given on the command line. Otherwise — meaningsortedor no argument at all — they're shown in reverse chronological order by commit time. ⏰ Cannot be combined with--graph.--do-walk— overrides a previous--no-walk. Simple as that, she said what she said. 💅
🌸 Commit Formatting 🌸
Using these options, git-rev-list(1) acts similar to the more specialized family of commit log tools: git-log(1), git-show(1), and git-whatchanged(1). Like, it's giving log-tool main character energy. ✨
--pretty[=<format>],--format=<format>— pretty-print the contents of the commit logs in a given format, where<format>can be one ofoneline,short,medium,full,fuller,reference,email,raw,format:<string>andtformat:<string>. When<format>is none of the above but has%<placeholder>in it, it acts as if you'd typed--pretty=tformat:<format>. 🦋
See the "PRETTY FORMATS" section for extra deets on each format. And when the =<format> part is omitted? It defaults to medium. Iconic default behaviour, honestly.
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. The--abbrev=<n>option (which also modifies diff output, if it's displayed) can be used to specify the minimum length of that prefix. This should make--pretty=onelinea whole lot more readable for people using 80-column terminals — yes, we're still doing 80 columns in this economy. 😭--no-abbrev-commit— show the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name. This negates--abbrev-commit, whether it was explicit or implied by other options such as--oneline. It also overrides thelog.abbrevCommitvariable. So it's the "actually, no" of commit flags. 💀--oneline— this is a shorthand for--pretty=oneline --abbrev-commitused together. Two flags in a trench coat. 🧥--encoding=<encoding>— commit objects record the character encoding used for the log message in their encoding header, and this option tells the command to re-code the commit log message into the encoding the user prefers. For non plumbing commands this defaults toUTF-8. ✨
Heads up though: if an object claims to be encoded in X and we're outputting in X, we output the object verbatim — which means invalid sequences in the original commit may get copied straight to the output. Likewise, if iconv(3) fails to convert the commit, we quietly output the original object verbatim. Quietly. Like it's not gonna tell you. 🙈
--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 a multiple of<n>) in the log message before showing it in the output.--expand-tabsis a short-hand for--expand-tabs=8, and--no-expand-tabsis a short-hand for--expand-tabs=0, which disables tab expansion entirely. 🎀
By default, tabs are expanded in pretty formats that indent the log message by 4 spaces (i.e. medium, which is the default, plus full and fuller).
--show-signature— check the validity of a signed commit object by passing the signature togpg --verifyand show the output. Crypto girlies rise. 🔐--relative-date— synonym for--date=relative. That's it, that's the whole thing. 💜--date=<format>— only takes effect for dates shown in human-readable format, like when you're using--pretty. Thelog.dateconfig variable sets a default value for thelogcommand's--dateoption. By default, dates are shown in the original time zone (either the committer's or the author's). If-localis appended to the format (e.g.,iso-local), the user's local time zone gets 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 an ISO 8601-like format. The differences from the strict ISO 8601 format are:
- a space instead of the
Tdate/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. No notes. She's perfect. 💅
--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 it does switch the accompanying timezone value.
--date=human shows the timezone if the timezone doesn't 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. Very "it's giving Tuesday" of it. 🗓️
--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:<format> feeds the <format> to your system strftime, except for %s, %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(3) manual for a complete list of format placeholders. And when you're using -local, the correct syntax is --date=format-local:<format>. Write that down. 📝
--date=default is the default format, and it's based on ctime(3) output. It shows a single line with three-letter day of the week, three-letter month, day-of-month, hour-minute-seconds in "HH:MM:SS" format, followed by 4-digit year, plus timezone information — unless the local time zone is used, e.g. Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 +0000.
--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. No effect on the built-in formats; only custom formats are affected. k byeee 👋--commit-header— overrides a previous--no-commit-header. She's back. 💅--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. Raw. Unfiltered. No glow-up. ⏱️--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 get prefixed with-. 🎯
For example, if you have this topology:
y---b---b branch B
/ \ /
/ .
/ / \
o---x---a---a branch Ayou 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--graphis not used, all history branches are flattened, which can make it hard to see that the two consecutive commits don't belong to a linear branch. This option puts a barrier in between them in that case. If<barrier>is specified, it's the string that will be shown instead of the default one. 🚧--graph-lane-limit=<n>— when--graphis used, limit the number of graph lanes to be shown. Lanes over the limit are replaced with a truncation mark~. By default it's set to0(no limit), and zero and negative values are ignored and treated as no limit. So setting it to-5does absolutely nothing, bestie. 🙈--no-graph-indent,--graph-indent— okay so when you pair this with--graph, it indents the visual roots (those are commits with no parents, or commits whose parents aren't being shown) so they don't get confused with commits that are just sitting vertically next to them but are, like, totally unrelated. It's on by default 💅. Use--no-graph-indentto turn it off, or setlog.graphIndentif you want to set a default preference.--count— this one just prints a number saying how many commits would have been listed, and suppresses literally all the other output. When you use it together with--left-right, it instead prints the counts for left and right commits, separated by a tab. And when used together with--cherry-mark, it omits the patch-equivalent commits from those counts and prints the count for equivalent commits, separated by a tab. Sneaky but slay ✨.
✨ PRETTY FORMATS ✨
Okay bestie, this is the glow-up section 💖. If the commit is a merge, and the pretty-format is not oneline, email or raw, then an extra line gets inserted before the Author: line. That line starts with Merge: and the hashes of the ancestral commits are printed, separated by spaces. Heads up though: the listed commits might not be the list of direct parent commits if you've limited your view of history — like, say you're only interested in changes related to a certain directory or file. iykyk 🫶
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, and they are iconic:
oneline
<hash> <title-line>This is designed to be as compact as possible. Fr fr, minimal queen 🎀
short
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
<title-line>medium
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
Date: <author-date>
<title-line>
<full-commit-message>full
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
Commit: <committer>
<title-line>
<full-commit-message>fuller
commit <hash>
Author: <author>
AuthorDate: <author-date>
Commit: <committer>
CommitDate: <committer-date>
<title-line>
<full-commit-message>reference
<abbrev-hash> (<title-line>, <short-author-date>)This format is used to refer to another commit in a commit message, and it's the same as --pretty='format:%C(auto)%h (%s, %ad)'. By default, the date is formatted with --date=short unless another --date option is explicitly specified. And just like any format: with format placeholders, its output is not affected by other options like --decorate and --walk-reflogs. Not me knowing this off the top of my head 💅
email
From <hash> <date>
From: <author>
Date: <author-date>
Subject: [PATCH] <title-line>
<full-commit-message>mboxrd
Like email, but lines in the commit message starting with From (preceded by zero or more >) are quoted with > so they aren't confused as starting a new commit. Protecting the vibe, one > at a time 🦋
raw
The raw format shows the entire commit exactly as stored in the commit object. Notably, the hashes are displayed in full, regardless of whether --abbrev or --no-abbrev are used, and parents information show the true parent commits, without taking grafts or history simplification into account. Note that this format affects the way commits are displayed, but not the way the diff is shown e.g. with git log --raw. To get full object names in a raw diff format, use --no-abbrev. So specific, so real 😌
format:<format-string>
The format:<format-string> format lets you 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:
🧚 Placeholders that expand to a single literal character
%n— newline%%— a raw%%x00—%xfollowed by two hexadecimal digits is replaced with a byte with the hexadecimal digits' value (we will call this "literal formatting code" in the rest of this document).
🎨 Placeholders that affect formatting of later placeholders
%Cred— switch color to red%Cgreen— switch color to green%Cblue— switch color to blue%Creset— reset color%C(<spec>)— color specification, as described under Values in the "CONFIGURATION FILE" section ofgit-config(1). By default, colors are shown only when enabled for log output (bycolor.diff,color.ui, or--color, and respecting theautosettings of the former if we are going to a terminal).%C(auto,<spec>)is accepted as a historical synonym for the default (e.g.,%C(auto,red)). Specifying%C(always,<spec>)will show the colors even when color is not otherwise enabled (though consider just using--color=alwaysto enable color for the whole output, including this format and anything else git might color).autoalone (i.e.%C(auto)) will turn on auto coloring on the next placeholders until the color is switched again. Color theory but make it git 🌈%m— left (<), right (>) or boundary (-) mark%w([<w>[,<i1>[,<i2>]]])— switch line wrapping, like the-woption ofgit-shortlog(1).%<(<n>[,(trunc|ltrunc|mtrunc)])— make the next placeholder take at least N column widths, padding spaces on the right if necessary. Optionally truncate (with ellipsis..) at the left (ltrunc)..ft, the middle (mtrunc)mi..le, or the end (trunc)rig.., if the output is longer than<n>columns. Note 1: that truncating only works correctly with<n> >= 2. Note 2: spaces around the<n>and<m>(see below) values are optional. Note 3: Emojis and other wide characters will take two display columns, which may over-run column boundaries. Note 4: decomposed character combining marks may be misplaced at padding boundaries. All that detail, obsessed 😭%<|(<m> )— make the next placeholder take at least until<m>th display column, padding spaces on the right if necessary. Use negative<m>values for column positions measured from the right hand edge of the terminal window.%>(<n>),%>|(<m>)— similar to%<(<n>),%<|(<m>)respectively, but padding spaces on the left%>>(<n>),%>>|(<m>)— similar to%>(<n>),%>|(<m>)respectively, except that if the next placeholder takes more spaces than given and there are spaces on its left, use those spaces%><(<n>),%><|(<m>)— similar to%<(<n>),%<|(<m>)respectively, but padding both sides (i.e. the text is centered)
👑 Placeholders that expand to information extracted from the commit
%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, seegit-shortlog(1)orgit-blame(1))%ae— author email%aE— author email (respecting.mailmap, seegit-shortlog(1)orgit-blame(1))%al— author email local-part (the part before the@sign)%aL— author local-part (see%al) respecting.mailmap, seegit-shortlog(1)orgit-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-like format%aI— author date, strict ISO 8601 format%as— author date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)%ah— author date, human style (like the--date=humanoption ofgit-rev-list(1))%cn— committer name%cN— committer name (respecting.mailmap, seegit-shortlog(1)orgit-blame(1))%ce— committer email%cE— committer email (respecting.mailmap, seegit-shortlog(1)orgit-blame(1))%cl— committer email local-part (the part before the@sign)%cL— committer local-part (see%cl) respecting.mailmap, seegit-shortlog(1)orgit-blame(1))%cd— committer date (format respects--date=option)%cD— committer date, RFC2822 style%cr— committer date, relative%ct— committer date, UNIX timestamp%ci— committer date, ISO 8601-like format%cI— committer date, strict ISO 8601 format%cs— committer date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)%ch— committer date, human style (like the--date=humanoption ofgit-rev-list(1))%d— ref names, like the--decorateoption ofgit-log(1)%D— ref names without the" (",")"wrapping.%(count)— the number of a patch within a patch series. Used only in--commit-list-formatinformat-patch%(total)— the total number of patches in a patch series. Used only in--commit-list-formatinformat-patch
okay so the placeholder lore keeps going, and this next batch is lowkey iconic 💅
%(decorate[:<option>,...])— drops ref names with custom decorations, bestie. Thedecoratestring may be followed by a colon and zero or more comma-separated options. Option values may contain literal formatting codes. Those codes must be used for commas (%x2C) and closing parentheses (%x29), because those characters are doing syntax jobs here.prefix=<value>— shown before the list of ref names. Defaults to" (".suffix=<value>— shown after the list of ref names. Defaults to")".separator=<value>— shown between ref names. Defaults to", ".pointer=<value>— shown betweenHEADand the branch it points to, if any. Defaults to" → ".tag=<value>— shown before tag names. Defaults to"tag: ".
For example, to produce decorations with no wrapping or tag annotations, and spaces as separators:
%(decorate:prefix=,suffix=,tag=,separator= )%(describe[:<option>,...])— human-readable name, likegit-describe(1); empty string for undescribable commits. Thedescribestring may be followed by a colon and zero or more comma-separated options. Descriptions can be inconsistent when tags are added or removed at the same time.tags[=<bool-value>]— instead of only considering annotated tags, consider lightweight tags as well.abbrev=<number>— instead of using the default number of hexadecimal digits (which will vary according to the number of objects in the repository with a default of7) of the abbreviated object name, use<number>digits, or as many digits as needed to form a unique object name.match=<pattern>— only consider tags matching the givenglob(7)<pattern>, excluding therefs/tags/prefix.exclude=<pattern>— do not consider tags matching the givenglob(7)<pattern>, excluding therefs/tags/prefix.
%S— ref name given on the command line by which the commit was reached (likegit log --source), only works withgit log.%e— encoding.%s— subject.%f— sanitized subject line, suitable for a filename.%b— body.%B— raw body (unwrapped subject and body).%GG— raw verification message from GPG for a signed commit.%G?— show"G"for a good (valid) signature,"B"for a bad signature,"U"for a good signature with unknown validity,"X"for a good signature that has expired,"Y"for a good signature made by an expired key,"R"for a good signature made by a revoked key,"E"if the signature cannot be checked (e.g. missing key) and"N"for no signature.%GS— show the name of the signer for a signed commit.%GK— show the key used to sign a signed commit.%GF— show the fingerprint of the key used to sign a signed commit.%GP— show the fingerprint of the primary key whose subkey was used to sign a signed commit.%GT— show the trust level for the key used to sign a signed commit.%gD— reflog selector, e.g.,refs/stash@{1}orrefs/stash@{2 minutes ago}; the format follows the rules described for the-goption. The portion before the@is the refname as given on the command line (sogit log -g refs/heads/masterwould yieldrefs/heads/master@{0}).%gd— shortened reflog selector; same as%gD, but the refname portion is shortened for human readability (sorefs/heads/masterbecomes justmaster).%gn— reflog identity name.%gN— reflog identity name (respecting.mailmap, seegit-shortlog(1)orgit-blame(1)).%ge— reflog identity email.%gE— reflog identity email (respecting.mailmap, seegit-shortlog(1)orgit-blame(1)).%gs— reflog subject.%(trailers[:<option>,...])— display the trailers of the body as interpreted bygit-interpret-trailers(1). Thetrailersstring may be followed by a colon and zero or more comma-separated options. If any option is provided multiple times, the last occurrence wins.key=<key>— only show trailers with specified<key>. Matching is done case-insensitively and trailing colon is optional. If option is given multiple times trailer lines matching any of the keys are shown. This option automatically enables theonlyoption so that non-trailer lines in the trailer block are hidden. If that is not desired it can be disabled withonly=false. E.g.,%(trailers:key=Reviewed-by)shows trailer lines with keyReviewed-by.only[=<bool>]— select whether non-trailer lines from the trailer block should be included.separator=<sep>— specify the separator inserted between trailer lines. Defaults to a line feed character. The string<sep>may contain the literal formatting codes described above. To use comma as separator one must use%x2Cas it would otherwise be parsed as next option. E.g.,%(trailers:key=Ticket,separator=%x2C )shows all trailer lines whose key isTicketseparated by a comma and a space.unfold[=<bool>]— make it behave as ifinterpret-trailer’s--unfoldoption was given. E.g.,%(trailers:only,unfold=true)unfolds and shows all trailer lines.keyonly[=<bool>]— only show the key part of the trailer.valueonly[=<bool>]— only show the value part of the trailer.key_value_separator=<sep>— specify the separator inserted between the key and value of each trailer. Defaults to": ". Otherwise it shares the same semantics asseparator=<sep>above.
Note, bestie: 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., bygit log -g). The%dand%Dplaceholders will use the"short"decoration format if--decoratewas not already provided on the command line.
The boolean options accept an optional value [=<bool-value>]. The values taken by --type=bool git-config(1), like yes and off, are all accepted. Giving a boolean option without =<value> is equivalent to giving it with =true.
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, all consecutive line-feeds immediately preceding 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
7134973In 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✨ EXAMPLES ✨
Okay bestie, these are the greatest-hits examples — literally the copy-paste core of git rev-list. Let’s go 💅
- Print the list of commits reachable from the current branch.
git rev-list HEAD- Print the list of commits on this branch, but not present in the upstream branch.
git rev-list @{upstream}..HEAD- Format commits with their author and commit message (see also the porcelain
git-log(1)).
git rev-list --format=medium HEAD- Format commits along with their diffs (see also the porcelain
git-log(1), which can do this in a single process).
git rev-list HEAD |
git diff-tree --stdin --format=medium -p- Print the list of commits on the current branch that touched any file in the
Documentationdirectory.
git rev-list HEAD -- Documentation/- Print the list of commits authored by you in the past year, on any branch, tag, or other ref.
git rev-list --author=you@example.com --since=1.year.ago --all- Print the list of objects reachable from the current branch (i.e., all commits and the blobs and trees they contain).
git rev-list --objects HEAD- Compare the disk size of all reachable objects, versus those reachable from reflogs, versus the total packed size. This can tell you whether running
git repack -admight reduce the repository size (by dropping unreachable objects), and whether expiring reflogs might help.
# reachable objects
git rev-list --disk-usage --objects --all
# plus reflogs
git rev-list --disk-usage --objects --all --reflog
# total disk size used
du -c .git/objects/pack/*.pack .git/objects/??/*
# alternative to du: add up "size" and "size-pack" fields
git count-objects -v- Report the disk size of each branch, not including objects used by the current branch. This can find outliers that are contributing to a bloated repository size (e.g., because somebody accidentally committed large build artifacts).
git for-each-ref --format='%(refname)' |
while read branch
do
size=$(git rev-list --disk-usage --objects HEAD..$branch)
echo "$size $branch"
done |
sort -n- Compare the on-disk size of branches in one group of refs, excluding another. If you co-mingle objects from multiple remotes in a single repository, this can show which remotes are contributing to the repository size (taking the size of origin as a baseline).
git rev-list --disk-usage --objects --remotes=$suspect --not --remotes=origin👑 GIT 👑
Part of the git(1) suite 💅
You’re reading the Git 2.56.0 edition, dated 2026-09-27 — slay, bestie 💖✨
📦 where this page comes from
- arch rolling: git 2.56.0-1 · GPL-2.0-only
- 💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms