NAME

git-rev-list - Lists commit objects in reverse chronological order

SYNOPSIS

  1. git rev-list [ --max-count=<number> ]
  2.          [ --skip=<number> ]
  3.          [ --max-age=<timestamp> ]
  4.          [ --min-age=<timestamp> ]
  5.          [ --sparse ]
  6.          [ --merges ]
  7.          [ --no-merges ]
  8.          [ --min-parents=<number> ]
  9.          [ --no-min-parents ]
  10.          [ --max-parents=<number> ]
  11.          [ --no-max-parents ]
  12.          [ --first-parent ]
  13.          [ --remove-empty ]
  14.          [ --full-history ]
  15.          [ --not ]
  16.          [ --all ]
  17.          [ --branches[=<pattern>] ]
  18.          [ --tags[=<pattern>] ]
  19.          [ --remotes[=<pattern>] ]
  20.          [ --glob=<glob-pattern> ]
  21.          [ --ignore-missing ]
  22.          [ --stdin ]
  23.          [ --quiet ]
  24.          [ --topo-order ]
  25.          [ --parents ]
  26.          [ --timestamp ]
  27.          [ --left-right ]
  28.          [ --left-only ]
  29.          [ --right-only ]
  30.          [ --cherry-mark ]
  31.          [ --cherry-pick ]
  32.          [ --encoding=<encoding> ]
  33.          [ --(author|committer|grep)=<pattern> ]
  34.          [ --regexp-ignore-case | -i ]
  35.          [ --extended-regexp | -E ]
  36.          [ --fixed-strings | -F ]
  37.          [ --date=<format>]
  38.          [ [ --objects | --objects-edge | --objects-edge-aggressive ]
  39.            [ --unpacked ]
  40.            [ --object-names | --no-object-names ]
  41.            [ --filter=<filter-spec> [ --filter-print-omitted ] ] ]
  42.          [ --missing=<missing-action> ]
  43.          [ --pretty | --header ]
  44.          [ --bisect ]
  45.          [ --bisect-vars ]
  46.          [ --bisect-all ]
  47.          [ --merge ]
  48.          [ --reverse ]
  49.          [ --walk-reflogs ]
  50.          [ --no-walk ] [ --do-walk ]
  51.          [ --count ]
  52.          [ --use-bitmap-index ]
  53.          <commit>…​ [ -- <paths>…​ ]

DESCRIPTION

List commits that are reachable by following the parent links from thegiven commit(s), but exclude commits that are reachable from the one(s)given with a ^ in front of them. The output is given in reversechronological order by default.

You can think of this as a set operation. Commits given on the commandline form a set of commits that are reachable from any of them, and thencommits reachable from any of the ones given with ^ in front aresubtracted from that set. The remaining commits are what comes out in thecommand’s output. Various other options and paths parameters can be usedto further limit the result.

Thus, the following command:

  1.     $ git rev-list foo bar ^baz

means "list all the commits which are reachable from foo or bar, butnot from baz".

A special notation "<commit1>..<commit2>" can be used as ashort-hand for "^'<commit1>' <commit2>". For example, either ofthe following may be used interchangeably:

  1.     $ git rev-list origin..HEAD
  2.     $ git rev-list HEAD ^origin

Another special notation is "<commit1>…​<commit2>" which is usefulfor merges. The resulting set of commits is the symmetric differencebetween the two operands. The following two commands are equivalent:

  1.     $ git rev-list A B --not $(git merge-base --all A B)
  2.     $ git rev-list A...B

rev-list is a very essential Git command, since itprovides the ability to build and traverse commit ancestry graphs. Forthis reason, it has a lot of different options that enables it to beused by commands as different as git bisect andgit repack.

OPTIONS

Commit Limiting

Besides specifying a range of commits that should be listed using thespecial notations explained in the description, additional commitlimiting may be applied.

Using more options generally further limits the output (e.g.—since=<date1> limits to commits newer than <date1>, and using itwith —grep=<pattern> further limits to commits whose log messagehas a line that matches <pattern>), unless otherwise noted.

Note that these are applied before commitordering and formatting options, such as —reverse.

  • -
  • -n
  • —max-count=

  • Limit the number of commits to output.

  • —skip=

  • Skip number commits before starting to show the commit output.

  • —since=

  • —after=

  • Show commits more recent than a specific date.

  • —until=

  • —before=

  • Show commits older than a specific date.

  • —max-age=

  • —min-age=

  • Limit the commits output to specified time range.

  • —author=

  • —committer=

  • Limit the commits output to ones with author/committerheader lines that match the specified pattern (regularexpression). With more than one —author=<pattern>,commits whose author matches any of the given patterns arechosen (similarly for multiple —committer=<pattern>).

  • —grep-reflog=

  • Limit the commits output to ones with reflog entries thatmatch the specified pattern (regular expression). Withmore than one —grep-reflog, commits whose reflog messagematches any of the given patterns are chosen. It is anerror to use this option unless —walk-reflogs is in use.

  • —grep=

  • Limit the commits output to ones with log message thatmatches the specified pattern (regular expression). Withmore than one —grep=<pattern>, commits whose messagematches 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 notmatch the pattern specified with —grep=<pattern>.

  • -i

  • —regexp-ignore-case

  • Match the regular expression limiting patterns without regard to lettercase.

  • —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 expressionsinstead of the default basic regular expressions.

  • -F

  • —fixed-strings

  • Consider the limiting patterns to be fixed strings (don’t interpretpattern as a regular expression).

  • -P

  • —perl-regexp
  • Consider the limiting patterns to be Perl-compatible regularexpressions.

Support for these types of regular expressions is an optionalcompile-time dependency. If Git wasn’t compiled with support for themproviding 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 isexactly the same as —max-parents=1.

  • —min-parents=

  • —max-parents=
  • —no-min-parents
  • —no-max-parents
  • Show only commits which have at least (or at most) that many parentcommits. In particular, —max-parents=1 is the same as —no-merges,—min-parents=2 is the same as —merges. —max-parents=0gives 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 moreparents) and —max-parents=-1 (negative numbers denote no upper limit).

  • —first-parent

  • Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a mergecommit. This option can give a better overview whenviewing the evolution of a particular topic branch,because merges into a topic branch tend to be only aboutadjusting to updated upstream from time to time, andthis option allows you to ignore the individual commitsbrought in to your history by such a merge. Cannot becombined with —bisect.

  • —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, arelisted on the command line as .

  • —branches[=]

  • Pretend as if all the refs in refs/heads are listedon the command line as . If is given, limitbranches to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?,*, or [, /* at the end is implied.

  • —tags[=]

  • Pretend as if all the refs in refs/tags are listedon the command line as . If is given, limittags to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, *,or [, /* at the end is implied.

  • —remotes[=]

  • Pretend as if all the refs in refs/remotes are listedon the command line as . If is given, limitremote-tracking branches to ones matching given shell glob.If pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.

  • —glob=

  • Pretend as if all the refs matching shell glob _are listed on the command line as . Leading _refs/,is automatically prepended if missing. If pattern lacks ?, *,or [, /* at the end is implied.

  • —exclude=

  • Do not include refs matching that the next —all,—branches, —tags, —remotes, or —glob would otherwiseconsider. Repetitions of this option accumulate exclusion patternsup to the next —all, —branches, —tags, —remotes, or—glob option (other options or arguments do not clearaccumulated patterns).

The patterns given should not begin with refs/heads, refs/tags, orrefs/remotes when applied to —branches, —tags, or —remotes,respectively, and they must begin with refs/ when applied to —globor —all. If a trailing /* is intended, it must be givenexplicitly.

  • —reflog

  • Pretend as if all objects mentioned by reflogs are listed on thecommand line as <commit>.

  • —alternate-refs

  • Pretend as if all objects mentioned as ref tips of alternaterepositories were listed on the command line. An alternaterepository is any repository whose object directory is specifiedin objects/info/alternates. The set of included objects maybe modified by core.alternateRefsCommand, etc. Seegit-config[1].

  • —single-worktree

  • By default, all working trees will be examined by thefollowing options when there are more than one (seegit-worktree[1]): —all, —reflog and—indexed-objects.This option forces them to examine the current working treeonly.

  • —ignore-missing

  • Upon seeing an invalid object name in the input, pretend as ifthe bad input was not given.

  • —stdin

  • In addition to the listed on the commandline, read them from the standard input. If a — separator isseen, stop reading commits and start reading paths to limit theresult.

  • —quiet

  • Don’t print anything to standard output. This formis primarily meant to allow the caller totest the exit status to see if a range of objects is fullyconnected (or not). It is faster than redirecting stdoutto /dev/null as the output does not have to be formatted.

  • —cherry-mark

  • Like —cherry-pick (see below) but mark equivalent commitswith = rather than omitting them, and inequivalent ones with +.

  • —cherry-pick

  • Omit any commit that introduces the same change asanother commit on the “other side” when the set ofcommits are limited with symmetric difference.

For example, if you have two branches, A and B, a usual wayto list all commits on only one side of them is with—left-right (see the example below in the description ofthe —left-right option). However, it shows the commits that werecherry-picked from the other branch (for example, “3rd on b” may becherry-picked from branch A). With this option, such pairs of commits areexcluded 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 thosecommits from B which are in A or are patch-equivalent to a commit inA. In other words, this lists the + commits from git cherry A B.More precisely, —cherry-pick —right-only —no-merges gives the exactlist.

  • —cherry

  • A synonym for —right-only —cherry-mark —no-merges; useful tolimit the output to the commits on our side and mark those thathave 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, walkreflog entries from the most recent one to older ones.When this option is used you cannot specify commits toexclude (that is, ^commit, commit1..commit2,and commit1…commit2 notations cannot be used).

With —pretty format other than oneline (for obvious reasons),this causes the output to have two extra lines of informationtaken from the reflog. The reflog designator in the output may be shownas ref@{Nth} (where Nth is the reverse-chronological index in thereflog) or as ref@{timestamp} (with the timestamp for that entry),depending on a few rules:

  • If the starting point is specified as ref@{Nth}, show the indexformat.

  • If the starting point was specified as ref@{now}, show thetimestamp format.

  • If neither was used, but —date was given on the command line, showthe timestamp in the format requested by —date.

  • Otherwise, show the index format.

Under —pretty=oneline, the commit message isprefixed with this information on the same line.This option cannot be combined with —reverse.See also git-reflog[1].

  • —merge

  • After a failed merge, show refs that touch files having aconflict and don’t exist on all heads to merge.

  • —boundary

  • Output excluded boundary commits. Boundary commits areprefixed with -.

  • —use-bitmap-index

  • Try to speed up the traversal using the pack bitmap index (ifone is available). Note that when traversing with —objects,trees and blobs will not have their associated path printed.

  • —progress=

  • 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 thecommits modifying a particular <path>. But there are two parts ofHistory Simplification, one part is selecting the commits and the otheris how to do it, as there are various strategies to simplify the history.

The following options select the commits to be shown:

  • Commits modifying the given 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 thefinal state of the tree. Simplest because it prunes some sidebranches if the end result is the same (i.e. merging brancheswith the same content)

  • —full-history

  • Same as the default mode, but does not prune some history.

  • —dense

  • Only the selected commits are shown, plus some to have ameaningful history.

  • —sparse

  • All commits in the simplified history are shown.

  • —simplify-merges

  • Additional option to —full-history to remove some needlessmerges from the resulting history, as there are no selectedcommits 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 existdirectly on the ancestry chain between the commit1 andcommit2, 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 commitsthat modify foo !TREESAME, and the rest TREESAME. (In a difffiltered for foo, they look different and equal, respectively.)

In the following, we will always refer to the same example history toillustrate the differences between simplification settings. We assumethat you are filtering for a file foo in this commit graph:

  1.       .-A---M---N---O---P---Q
  2.      /     /   /   /   /   /
  3.     I     B   C   D   E   Y
  4.      \   /   /   /   /   /
  5.       `-------------'   X

The horizontal line of history A—-Q is taken to be the first parent ofeach merge. The commits are:

  • I is the initial commit, in which foo exists with contents“asdf”, and a file quux exists with contents “quux”. Initialcommits 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 andhence 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 fromN and D to “foobarbaz”; i.e., it is not TREESAME to any parent.

  • E changes quux to “xyzzy”, and its merge P combines thestrings 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 Ymodified it. Y is TREESAME to X. Its merge Q added side to P, andQ is TREESAME to P, but not to Y.

rev-list walks backwards through history, including or excludingcommits based on whether —full-history and/or parent rewriting(via —parents or —children) are used. The following settingsare available.

  • Default mode
  • Commits are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent(though this can be changed, see —sparse below). If thecommit was a merge, and it was TREESAME to one parent, followonly that parent. (Even if there are several TREESAMEparents, follow only one of them.) Otherwise, follow allparents.

This results in:

  1.       .-A---N---O
  2.      /     /   /
  3.     I---------D

Note how the rule to only follow the TREESAME parent, if one isavailable, removed B from consideration entirely. C wasconsidered via N, but is TREESAME. Root commits are compared to anempty tree, so I is !TREESAME.

Parent/child relations are only visible with —parents, but that doesnot affect the commits selected in default mode, so we have shown theparent lines.

  • —full-history without parent rewriting
  • This mode differs from the default in one point: always followall 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 areincluded, this does not imply that the merge itself is! Inthe example, we get
  1.     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 othersdo not appear.

Note that without parent rewriting, it is not really possible to talkabout the parent/child relationships between the commits, so we showthem 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 includedthemselves. This results in

  1.       .-A---M---N---O---P---Q
  2.      /     /   /   /   /
  3.     I     B   /   D   /
  4.      \   /   /   /   /
  5.       `-------------'

Compare to —full-history without rewriting above. Note that Ewas pruned away because it is TREESAME, but the parent list of P wasrewritten to contain E's parent I. The same happened for C andN, and X, Y and Q.

In addition to the above settings, you can change whether TREESAMEaffects inclusion:

  • —dense

  • Commits that are walked are included if they are not TREESAMEto any parent.

  • —sparse

  • All commits that are walked are included.

Note that without —full-history, this still simplifies merges: ifone of the parents is TREESAME, we follow only that one, so the othersides 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 finalhistory according to the following rules:

  • Set C' to C.

  • Replace each parent P of C' with its simplification P'. Inthe process, drop parents that are ancestors of other parents or that areroot commits TREESAME to an empty tree, and remove duplicates, but take careto never drop all parents that we are TREESAME to.

  • If after this parent rewriting, C' is a root or merge commit (haszero 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:

  1.       .-A---M---N---O
  2.      /     /       /
  3.     I     B       D
  4.      \   /       /
  5.       `---------'

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 theother parent M. Still, N remained because it is !TREESAME.

  • P's parent list similarly had I removed. P was thenremoved completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME.

  • Q's parent list had Y simplified to X. X was then removed, because itwas a TREESAME root. Q was then removed completely, because it had oneparent and is TREESAME.

Finally, there is a fifth simplification mode available:

  • —ancestry-path
  • Limit the displayed commits to those directly on the ancestrychain between the “from” and “to” commits in the given commitrange. 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:

  1.         D---E-------F
  2.        /     \       \
  3.       B---C---G---H---I---J
  4.      /                     \
  5.     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 seewhat happened to the history leading to M since D, in the sensethat “what does M have that did not exist in D”. The result in thisexample 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 thebug introduced by D and need fixing, however, we might want to viewonly the subset of D..M that are actually descendants of D, i.e.excluding C and K. This is exactly what the —ancestry-pathoption does. Applied to the D..M range, it results in:

  1.         E-------F
  2.          \       \
  3.           G---H---I---J
  4.                    \
  5.                 L--M

The —simplify-by-decoration option allows you to view only thebig picture of the topology of the history, by omitting commitsthat are not referenced by tags. Commits are marked as !TREESAME(in other words, kept after history simplification rules describedabove) if (1) they are referenced by tags, or (2) they change thecontents of the paths given on the command line. All othercommits are marked as TREESAME (subject to be simplified away).

Bisection Helpers

  • —bisect
  • Limit output to the one commit object which is roughly halfway betweenincluded and excluded commits. Note that the bad bisection refrefs/bisect/bad is added to the included commits (if itexists) and the good bisection refs refs/bisect/good-* areadded to the excluded commits (if they exist). Thus, supposing thereare no refs in refs/bisect/, if
  1.     $ git rev-list --bisect foo ^bar ^baz

outputs midpoint, the output of the two commands

  1.     $ git rev-list foo ^midpoint
  2.     $ git rev-list midpoint ^bar ^baz

would be of roughly the same length. Finding the change whichintroduces a regression is thus reduced to a binary search: repeatedlygenerate and test new 'midpoint’s until the commit chain is of lengthone. Cannot be combined with —first-parent.

  • —bisect-vars

  • This calculates the same as —bisect, except that refs inrefs/bisect/ are not used, and except that this outputstext ready to be eval’ed by the shell. These lines will assign thename of the midpoint revision to the variable bisect_rev, and theexpected number of commits to be tested after bisect_rev is testedto bisect_nr, the expected number of commits to be tested ifbisect_rev turns out to be good to bisect_good, the expectednumber of commits to be tested if bisect_rev turns out to be bad tobisect_bad, and the number of commits we are bisecting right now tobisect_all.

  • —bisect-all

  • This outputs all the commit objects between the included and excludedcommits, ordered by their distance to the included and excludedcommits. Refs in refs/bisect/ are not used. The farthestfrom 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 totest when you want to avoid to test some of them for some reason (theymay 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, butotherwise show commits in the commit timestamp order.

  • —author-date-order

  • Show no parents before all of its children are shown, butotherwise show commits in the author timestamp order.

  • —topo-order

  • Show no parents before all of its children are shown, andavoid showing commits on multiple lines of historyintermixed.

For example, in a commit history like this:

  1.     ---1----2----4----7
  2.     \           \
  3.      3----5----6----8---

where the numbers denote the order of commit timestamps, gitrev-list and friends with —date-order show the commits in thetimestamp 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 53 1); some older commits are shown before newer ones in order toavoid showing the commits from two parallel development track mixedtogether.

  • —reverse
  • Output the commits chosen to be shown (see Commit Limitingsection 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 listedcommits. —objects foo ^bar thus means “send meall object IDs which I need to download if I have the commitobject bar but not foo”.

  • —in-commit-order

  • Print tree and blob ids in order of the commits. The treeand blob ids are printed after they are first referencedby a commit.

  • —objects-edge

  • Similar to —objects, but also print the IDs of excludedcommits prefixed with a “-” character. This is used bygit-pack-objects[1] to build a “thin” pack, which recordsobjects in deltified form based on objects contained in theseexcluded commits to reduce network traffic.

  • —objects-edge-aggressive

  • Similar to —objects-edge, but it tries harder to find excludedcommits 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 listedon the command line. Note that you probably want to use—objects, too.

  • —unpacked

  • Only useful with —objects; print the object IDs that are notin packs.

  • —object-names

  • Only useful with —objects; print the names of the object IDsthat are found. This is the default behavior.

  • —no-object-names

  • Only useful with —objects; does not print the names of the objectIDs that are found. This inverts —object-names. This flag allowsthe output to be more easily parsed by commands such asgit-cat-file[1].

  • —filter=

  • Only useful with one of the —objects*; omits objects (usuallyblobs) from the list of printed objects. The __may be one of the following:

The form —filter=blob:none omits all blobs.

The form —filter=blob:limit=[kmg] omits blobs larger than n bytesor units. n may be zero. The suffixes k, m, and g can be used to nameunits in KiB, MiB, or GiB. For example, blob:limit=1k is the sameas blob:limit=1024.

The form —filter=sparse:oid= uses a sparse-checkoutspecification contained in the blob (or blob-expression) __to omit blobs that would not be not required for a sparse checkout onthe requested refs.

The form —filter=tree: omits all blobs and trees whose depthfrom the root tree is >= (minimum depth if an object is locatedat multiple depths in the commits traversed). =0 will not includeany trees or blobs unless included explicitly in the command-line (orstandard input when —stdin is used). =1 will include only thetree and blobs which are referenced directly by a commit reachable from or an explicitly-given object. =2 is like =1while also including trees and blobs one more level removed from anexplicitly-given commit or tree.

Note that the form —filter=sparse:path= that wants to readfrom an arbitrary path on the filesystem has been dropped for securityreasons.

  • —no-filter

  • Turn off any previous —filter= argument.

  • —filter-print-omitted

  • Only useful with —filter=; prints a list of the objects omittedby the filter. Object IDs are prefixed with a “~” character.

  • —missing=

  • 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 ifa missing object is encountered. This is the default action.

The form —missing=allow-any will allow object traversal to continueif a missing object is encountered. Missing objects will silently beomitted from the results.

The form —missing=allow-promisor is like allow-any, but will onlyallow 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 alist of the missing objects. Object IDs are prefixed with a “?” character.

  • —exclude-promisor-objects

  • (For internal use only.) Prefilter object traversal atpromisor boundary. This is used with partial clone. This isstronger than —missing=allow-promisor because it limits thetraversal, rather than just silencing errors about missingobjects.

  • —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 argumentunsorted is given, the commits are shown in the order they weregiven on the command line. Otherwise (if sorted or no argumentwas given), the commits are shown in reverse chronological orderby 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 themore specialized family of commit log tools: git-log[1],git-show[1], and git-whatchanged[1]

  • —pretty[=]
  • —format=
  • Pretty-print the contents of the commit logs in a given format,where can be one of oneline, short, medium,full, fuller, email, raw, format:_and _tformat:. When is none of the above,and has %placeholder in it, it acts as if—pretty=tformat: were given.

See the "PRETTY FORMATS" section for some additional details for eachformat. When = part is omitted, it defaults to medium.

Note: you can specify the default pretty format in the repositoryconfiguration (see git-config[1]).

  • —abbrev-commit
  • Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit objectname, show only a partial prefix. Non default number ofdigits can be specified with "—abbrev=" (which also modifiesdiff output, if it is displayed).

This should make "—pretty=oneline" a whole lot more readable forpeople using 80-column terminals.

  • —no-abbrev-commit

  • Show the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name. This negates—abbrev-commit and those options which imply it such as"—oneline". It also overrides the log.abbrevCommit variable.

  • —oneline

  • This is a shorthand for "—pretty=oneline —abbrev-commit"used together.

  • —encoding=

  • The commit objects record the encoding used for the log messagein their encoding header; this option can be used to tell thecommand to re-code the commit log message in the encodingpreferred by the user. For non plumbing commands thisdefaults to UTF-8. Note that if an object claims to be encodedin X and we are outputting in X, we will output the objectverbatim; this means that invalid sequences in the originalcommit may be copied to the output.

  • —expand-tabs=

  • —expand-tabs
  • —no-expand-tabs
  • Perform a tab expansion (replace each tab with enough spacesto fill to the next display column that is multiple of )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 logmessage 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 signatureto gpg —verify and show the output.

  • —relative-date

  • Synonym for —date=relative.

  • —date=

  • Only takes effect for dates shown in human-readable format, suchas when using —pretty. log.date config variable sets a defaultvalue for the log command’s —date option. By default, datesare shown in the original time zone (either committer’s orauthor’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 strictISO 8601 format.

—date=rfc (or —date=rfc2822) shows timestamps in RFC 2822format, 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 (1970-01-0100:00:00 UTC), followed by a space, and then the timezone as an offsetfrom UTC (a + or - with four digits; the first two are hours, andthe second two are minutes). I.e., as if the timestamp were formattedwith strftime("%s %z")).Note that the -local option does not affect the seconds-since-epochvalue (which is always measured in UTC), but does switch the accompanyingtimezone value.

—date=human shows the timezone if the timezone does not match thecurrent time-zone, and doesn’t print the whole date if that matches(ie skip printing year for dates that are "this year", but also skipthe whole date itself if it’s in the last few days and we can just saywhat weekday it was). For older dates the hour and minute is alsoomitted.

—date=unix shows the date as a Unix epoch timestamp (seconds since1970). As with —raw, this is always in UTC and therefore -localhas 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’spreferred format. See the strftime manual for a complete list offormat 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 isseparated with a NUL character.

  • —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 fromthe right with >. If combined with —boundary, thosecommits are prefixed with -.

For example, if you have this topology:

  1.          y---b---b  branch B
  2.         / \ /
  3.        /   .
  4.       /   / \
  5.      o---x---a---a  branch A

you would get an output like this:

  1.     $ git rev-list --left-right --boundary --pretty=oneline A...B
  2.  
  3.     >bbbbbbb... 3rd on b
  4.     >bbbbbbb... 2nd on b
  5.     <aaaaaaa... 3rd on a
  6.     <aaaaaaa... 2nd on a
  7.     -yyyyyyy... 1st on b
  8.     -xxxxxxx... 1st on a
  • —graph
  • Draw a text-based graphical representation of the commit historyon the left hand side of the output. This may cause extra linesto be printed in between commits, in order for the graph historyto 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[=]

  • When —graph is not used, all history branches are flattenedwhich can make it hard to see that the two consecutive commitsdo not belong to a linear branch. This option puts a barrierin between them in that case. If <barrier> is specified, itis the string that will be shown instead of the default one.

  • —count

  • Print a number stating how many commits would have beenlisted, and suppress all other output. When used togetherwith —left-right, instead print the counts for left andright commits, separated by a tab. When used together with—cherry-mark, omit patch equivalent commits from thesecounts and print the count for equivalent commits separatedby a tab.

PRETTY FORMATS

If the commit is a merge, and if the pretty-formatis not oneline, email or raw, an additional line isinserted before the Author: line. This line begins with"Merge: " and the sha1s of ancestral commits are printed,separated by spaces. Note that the listed commits may notnecessarily be the list of the direct parent commits if youhave limited your view of history: for example, if you areonly interested in changes related to a certain directory orfile.

There are several built-in formats, and you can defineadditional formats by setting a pretty.<name>config option to either another format name, or aformat: string, as described below (seegit-config[1]). Here are the details of thebuilt-in formats:

  • oneline
  1. <sha1> <title line>

This is designed to be as compact as possible.

  • short
  1. commit <sha1>
  2. Author: <author>
  1. <title line>
  • medium
  1. commit <sha1>
  2. Author: <author>
  3. Date:   <author date>
  1. <title line>
  1. <full commit message>
  • full
  1. commit <sha1>
  2. Author: <author>
  3. Commit: <committer>
  1. <title line>
  1. <full commit message>
  • fuller
  1. commit <sha1>
  2. Author:     <author>
  3. AuthorDate: <author date>
  4. Commit:     <committer>
  5. CommitDate: <committer date>
  1. <title line>
  1. <full commit message>
  • email
  1. From <sha1> <date>
  2. From: <author>
  3. Date: <author date>
  4. Subject: [PATCH] <title line>
  1. <full commit message>
  • raw

The raw format shows the entire commit exactly asstored in the commit object. Notably, the SHA-1s aredisplayed in full, regardless of whether —abbrev or—no-abbrev are used, and parents information show thetrue parent commits, without taking grafts or historysimplification into account. Note that this format affects the waycommits are displayed, but not the way the diff is shown e.g. withgit log —raw. To get full object names in a raw diff format,use —no-abbrev.

  • format:

The format: format allows you to specify which informationyou 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:

  1. The author of fe6e0ee was Junio C Hamano, 23 hours ago
  2. The title was >>t4119: test autocomputing -p<n> for traditional diff input.<<

The placeholders are:

  • Placeholders that expand to a single literal character:
  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emnem)_%n_
  2. -

newline

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emem)_%%_
  2. -

a raw %

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emx00em)_%x00_
  2. -

print a byte from a hex code

  • Placeholders that affect formatting of later placeholders:
  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emCredem)_%Cred_
  2. -

switch color to red

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emCgreenem)_%Cgreen_
  2. -

switch color to green

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emCblueem)_%Cblue_
  2. -

switch color to blue

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emCresetem)_%Creset_
  2. -

reset color

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emC82308203em)_%C(…​)_
  2. -

color specification, as described under Values in the"CONFIGURATION FILE" section of git-config[1]. Bydefault, colors are shown only when enabled for log output(by color.diff, color.ui, or —color, and respectingthe auto settings of the former if we are going to aterminal). %C(auto,…) is accepted as a historicalsynonym for the default (e.g., %C(auto,red)). Specifying%C(always,…) will show the colors even when color isnot otherwise enabled (though consider just using—color=always to enable color for the whole output,including this format and anything else git might color).auto alone (i.e. %C(auto)) will turn on auto coloringon the next placeholders until the color is switchedagain.

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emmem)_%m_
  2. -

left (<), right (>) or boundary (-) mark

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emwltwgtlti1gtlti2gtem)_%w([<w>[,<i1>[,<i2>]]])_
  2. -

switch line wrapping, like the -w option ofgit-shortlog[1].

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emltltNgttruncltruncmtruncem)_%&lt;(<n>[,trunc|ltrunc|mtrunc])_
  2. -

make the next placeholder take atleast N columns, padding spaces onthe right if necessary. Optionallytruncate at the beginning (ltrunc),the middle (mtrunc) or the end(trunc) if the output is longer thanN columns. Note that truncatingonly works correctly with N >= 2.

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emltltNgtem)_%&lt;|(<n>)_
  2. -

make the next placeholder take at least until Nthcolumns, padding spaces on the right if necessary

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emgtltNgtememgtltNgtem)_%&gt;(<n>)_, _%&gt;|(<n>)_
  2. -

similar to %<(), %<|() respectively,but padding spaces on the left

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emgtgtltNgtememgtgtltNgtem)_%&gt;&gt;(<n>)_, _%&gt;&gt;|(<n>)_
  2. -

similar to %>(), _%>|()_respectively, except that if the nextplaceholder takes more spaces than given andthere are spaces on its left, use thosespaces

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emgtltltNgtememgtltltNgtem)_%&gt;&lt;(<n>)_, _%&gt;&lt;|(<n>)_
  2. -

similar to %<(), _%<|()_respectively, but padding both sides(i.e. the text is centered)

  • Placeholders that expand to information extracted from the commit:
  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emHem)_%H_
  2. -

commit hash

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emhem)_%h_
  2. -

abbreviated commit hash

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emTem)_%T_
  2. -

tree hash

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emtem)_%t_
  2. -

abbreviated tree hash

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emPem)_%P_
  2. -

parent hashes

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-empem)_%p_
  2. -

abbreviated parent hashes

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emanem)_%an_
  2. -

author name

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emaNem)_%aN_
  2. -

author name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog[1]or git-blame[1])

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emaeem)_%ae_
  2. -

author email

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emaEem)_%aE_
  2. -

author email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog[1]or git-blame[1])

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emadem)_%ad_
  2. -

author date (format respects —date= option)

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emaDem)_%aD_
  2. -

author date, RFC2822 style

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emarem)_%ar_
  2. -

author date, relative

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-ematem)_%at_
  2. -

author date, UNIX timestamp

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emaiem)_%ai_
  2. -

author date, ISO 8601-like format

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emaIem)_%aI_
  2. -

author date, strict ISO 8601 format

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emcnem)_%cn_
  2. -

committer name

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emcNem)_%cN_
  2. -

committer name (respecting .mailmap, seegit-shortlog[1] or git-blame[1])

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emceem)_%ce_
  2. -

committer email

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emcEem)_%cE_
  2. -

committer email (respecting .mailmap, seegit-shortlog[1] or git-blame[1])

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emcdem)_%cd_
  2. -

committer date (format respects —date= option)

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emcDem)_%cD_
  2. -

committer date, RFC2822 style

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emcrem)_%cr_
  2. -

committer date, relative

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emctem)_%ct_
  2. -

committer date, UNIX timestamp

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emciem)_%ci_
  2. -

committer date, ISO 8601-like format

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emcIem)_%cI_
  2. -

committer date, strict ISO 8601 format

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emdem)_%d_
  2. -

ref names, like the —decorate option of git-log[1]

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emDem)_%D_
  2. -

ref names without the " (", ")" wrapping.

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emSem)_%S_
  2. -

ref name given on the command line by which the commit was reached(like git log —source), only works with git log

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emeem)_%e_
  2. -

encoding

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emsem)_%s_
  2. -

subject

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emfem)_%f_
  2. -

sanitized subject line, suitable for a filename

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-embem)_%b_
  2. -

body

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emBem)_%B_
  2. -

raw body (unwrapped subject and body)

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emGGem)_%GG_
  2. -

raw verification message from GPG for a signed commit

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emGem)_%G?_
  2. -

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

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emGSem)_%GS_
  2. -

show the name of the signer for a signed commit

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emGKem)_%GK_
  2. -

show the key used to sign a signed commit

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emGFem)_%GF_
  2. -

show the fingerprint of the key used to sign a signed commit

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emGPem)_%GP_
  2. -

show the fingerprint of the primary key whose subkey was usedto sign a signed commit

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emgDem)_%gD_
  2. -

reflog selector, e.g., refs/stash@{1} or refs/stash@{2minutes ago}; the format follows the rules described for the-g option. The portion before the @ is the refname asgiven on the command line (so git log -g refs/heads/masterwould yield refs/heads/master@{0}).

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emgdem)_%gd_
  2. -

shortened reflog selector; same as %gD, but the refnameportion is shortened for human readability (sorefs/heads/master becomes just master).

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emgnem)_%gn_
  2. -

reflog identity name

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emgNem)_%gN_
  2. -

reflog identity name (respecting .mailmap, seegit-shortlog[1] or git-blame[1])

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emgeem)_%ge_
  2. -

reflog identity email

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emgEem)_%gE_
  2. -

reflog identity email (respecting .mailmap, seegit-shortlog[1] or git-blame[1])

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emgsem)_%gs_
  2. -

reflog subject

  1. - [](https://git-scm.com/docs/#Documentation/git-rev-list.txt-emtrailersoptionsem)_%(trailers[:options])_
  2. -

display the trailers of the body asinterpreted bygit-interpret-trailers[1]. Thetrailers string may be followed by a colonand zero or more comma-separated options:

  1.   -

key=: only show trailers with specified key. Matching is donecase-insensitively and trailing colon is optional. If option isgiven multiple times trailer lines matching any of the keys areshown. This option automatically enables the only option so thatnon-trailer lines in the trailer block are hidden. If that is notdesired it can be disabled with only=false. E.g.,%(trailers:key=Reviewed-by) shows trailer lines with keyReviewed-by.

  1.   -

only[=val]: select whether non-trailer lines from the trailerblock should be included. The only keyword may optionally befollowed by an equal sign and one of true, on, yes to omit orfalse, off, no to show the non-trailer lines. If option isgiven without value it is enabled. If given multiple times the lastvalue is used.

  1.   -

separator=: specify a separator inserted between trailerlines. When this option is not given each trailer line isterminated with a line feed character. The string SEP may containthe literal formatting codes described above. To use comma asseparator one must use %x2C as it would otherwise be parsed asnext option. If separator option is given multiple times only thelast one is used. E.g., %(trailers:key=Ticket,separator=%x2C )shows all trailer lines whose key is "Ticket" separated by a commaand a space.

  1.   -

unfold[=val]: make it behave as if interpret-trailer’s —unfoldoption was given. In same way as to for only it can be followedby an equal sign and explicit value. E.g.,%(trailers:only,unfold=true) unfolds and shows all trailer lines.

  1.   -

valueonly[=val]: skip over the key part of the trailer line and onlyshow the value part. Also this optionally allows explicit value.

NoteSome placeholders may depend on other options given to therevision traversal engine. For example, the %g* reflog options willinsert an empty string unless we are traversing reflog entries (e.g., bygit log -g). The %d and %D placeholders will use the "short"decoration format if —decorate was not already provided on the commandline.

If you add a + (plus sign) after % of a placeholder, a line-feedis inserted immediately before the expansion if and only if theplaceholder expands to a non-empty string.

If you add a - (minus sign) after % of a placeholder, all consecutiveline-feeds immediately preceding the expansion are deleted if and only if theplaceholder expands to an empty string.

If you add a (space) after % of a placeholder, a spaceis inserted immediately before the expansion if and only if theplaceholder expands to a non-empty string.

  • tformat:

The tformat: format works exactly like format:, except that itprovides "terminator" semantics instead of "separator" semantics. Inother words, each commit has the message terminator character (usually anewline) appended, rather than a separator placed between entries.This means that the final entry of a single-line format will be properlyterminated with a new line, just as the "oneline" format does.For example:

  1. $ git log -2 --pretty=format:%h 4da45bef \
  2.   | perl -pe '$_ .= " -- NO NEWLINE\n" unless /\n/'
  3. 4da45be
  4. 7134973 -- NO NEWLINE
  5.  
  6. $ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef \
  7.   | perl -pe '$_ .= " -- NO NEWLINE\n" unless /\n/'
  8. 4da45be
  9. 7134973

In addition, any unrecognized string that has a % in it is interpretedas if it has tformat: in front of it. For example, these two areequivalent:

  1. $ git log -2 --pretty=tformat:%h 4da45bef
  2. $ git log -2 --pretty=%h 4da45bef

GIT

Part of the git[1] suite