Documentation / git-rev-list.txton commit Merge branch 'jc/checkout' (early part) (b7108a1)
   1git-rev-list(1)
   2===============
   3
   4NAME
   5----
   6git-rev-list - Lists commit objects in reverse chronological order
   7
   8
   9SYNOPSIS
  10--------
  11[verse]
  12'git-rev-list' [ \--max-count=number ]
  13             [ \--skip=number ]
  14             [ \--max-age=timestamp ]
  15             [ \--min-age=timestamp ]
  16             [ \--sparse ]
  17             [ \--no-merges ]
  18             [ \--remove-empty ]
  19             [ \--not ]
  20             [ \--all ]
  21             [ \--stdin ]
  22             [ \--topo-order ]
  23             [ \--parents ]
  24             [ \--left-right ]
  25             [ \--encoding[=<encoding>] ]
  26             [ \--(author|committer|grep)=<pattern> ]
  27             [ [\--objects | \--objects-edge] [ \--unpacked ] ]
  28             [ \--pretty | \--header ]
  29             [ \--bisect ]
  30             [ \--bisect-vars ]
  31             [ \--merge ]
  32             [ \--reverse ]
  33             [ \--walk-reflogs ]
  34             <commit>... [ \-- <paths>... ]
  35
  36DESCRIPTION
  37-----------
  38
  39Lists commit objects in reverse chronological order starting at the
  40given commit(s), taking ancestry relationship into account.  This is
  41useful to produce human-readable log output.
  42
  43Commits which are stated with a preceding '{caret}' cause listing to
  44stop at that point. Their parents are implied. Thus the following
  45command:
  46
  47-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  48        $ git-rev-list foo bar ^baz
  49-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  50
  51means "list all the commits which are included in 'foo' and 'bar', but
  52not in 'baz'".
  53
  54A special notation "'<commit1>'..'<commit2>'" can be used as a
  55short-hand for "{caret}'<commit1>' '<commit2>'". For example, either of
  56the following may be used interchangeably:
  57
  58-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  59        $ git-rev-list origin..HEAD
  60        $ git-rev-list HEAD ^origin
  61-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  62
  63Another special notation is "'<commit1>'...'<commit2>'" which is useful
  64for merges.  The resulting set of commits is the symmetric difference
  65between the two operands.  The following two commands are equivalent:
  66
  67-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  68        $ git-rev-list A B --not $(git-merge-base --all A B)
  69        $ git-rev-list A...B
  70-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  71
  72gitlink:git-rev-list[1] is a very essential git program, since it
  73provides the ability to build and traverse commit ancestry graphs. For
  74this reason, it has a lot of different options that enables it to be
  75used by commands as different as gitlink:git-bisect[1] and
  76gitlink:git-repack[1].
  77
  78OPTIONS
  79-------
  80
  81Commit Formatting
  82~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  83
  84Using these options, gitlink:git-rev-list[1] will act similar to the
  85more specialized family of commit log tools: gitlink:git-log[1],
  86gitlink:git-show[1], and gitlink:git-whatchanged[1]
  87
  88include::pretty-formats.txt[]
  89
  90--relative-date::
  91
  92        Show dates relative to the current time, e.g. "2 hours ago".
  93        Only takes effect for dates shown in human-readable format, such
  94        as when using "--pretty".
  95
  96--header::
  97
  98        Print the contents of the commit in raw-format; each record is
  99        separated with a NUL character.
 100
 101--parents::
 102
 103        Print the parents of the commit.
 104
 105--left-right::
 106
 107        Mark which side of a symmetric diff a commit is reachable from.
 108        Commits from the left side are prefixed with `<` and those from
 109        the right with `>`.  If combined with `--boundary`, those
 110        commits are prefixed with `-`.
 111+
 112For example, if you have this topology:
 113+
 114-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 115             y---b---b  branch B
 116            / \ /
 117           /   .
 118          /   / \
 119         o---x---a---a  branch A
 120-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 121+
 122you would get an output line this:
 123+
 124-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 125        $ git rev-list --left-right --boundary --pretty=oneline A...B
 126
 127        >bbbbbbb... 3rd on b
 128        >bbbbbbb... 2nd on b
 129        <aaaaaaa... 3rd on a
 130        <aaaaaaa... 2nd on a
 131        -yyyyyyy... 1st on b
 132        -xxxxxxx... 1st on a
 133-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 134
 135Diff Formatting
 136~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 137
 138Below are listed options that control the formatting of diff output.
 139Some of them are specific to gitlink:git-rev-list[1], however other diff
 140options may be given. See gitlink:git-diff-files[1] for more options.
 141
 142-c::
 143
 144        This flag changes the way a merge commit is displayed.  It shows
 145        the differences from each of the parents to the merge result
 146        simultaneously instead of showing pairwise diff between a parent
 147        and the result one at a time. Furthermore, it lists only files
 148        which were modified from all parents.
 149
 150--cc::
 151
 152        This flag implies the '-c' options and further compresses the
 153        patch output by omitting hunks that show differences from only
 154        one parent, or show the same change from all but one parent for
 155        an Octopus merge.
 156
 157-r::
 158
 159        Show recursive diffs.
 160
 161-t::
 162
 163        Show the tree objects in the diff output. This implies '-r'.
 164
 165Commit Limiting
 166~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 167
 168Besides specifying a range of commits that should be listed using the
 169special notations explained in the description, additional commit
 170limiting may be applied.
 171
 172--
 173
 174-n 'number', --max-count='number'::
 175
 176        Limit the number of commits output.
 177
 178--skip='number'::
 179
 180        Skip 'number' commits before starting to show the commit output.
 181
 182--since='date', --after='date'::
 183
 184        Show commits more recent than a specific date.
 185
 186--until='date', --before='date'::
 187
 188        Show commits older than a specific date.
 189
 190--max-age='timestamp', --min-age='timestamp'::
 191
 192        Limit the commits output to specified time range.
 193
 194--author='pattern', --committer='pattern'::
 195
 196        Limit the commits output to ones with author/committer
 197        header lines that match the specified pattern.
 198
 199--grep='pattern'::
 200
 201        Limit the commits output to ones with log message that
 202        matches the specified pattern.
 203
 204--remove-empty::
 205
 206        Stop when a given path disappears from the tree.
 207
 208--no-merges::
 209
 210        Do not print commits with more than one parent.
 211
 212--not::
 213
 214        Reverses the meaning of the '{caret}' prefix (or lack thereof)
 215        for all following revision specifiers, up to the next '--not'.
 216
 217--all::
 218
 219        Pretend as if all the refs in `$GIT_DIR/refs/` are listed on the
 220        command line as '<commit>'.
 221
 222--stdin::
 223
 224        In addition to the '<commit>' listed on the command
 225        line, read them from the standard input.
 226
 227-g, --walk-reflogs::
 228
 229        Instead of walking the commit ancestry chain, walk
 230        reflog entries from the most recent one to older ones.
 231        When this option is used you cannot specify commits to
 232        exclude (that is, '{caret}commit', 'commit1..commit2',
 233        nor 'commit1...commit2' notations cannot be used).
 234+
 235With '\--pretty' format other than oneline (for obvious reasons),
 236this causes the output to have two extra lines of information
 237taken from the reflog.  By default, 'commit@{Nth}' notation is
 238used in the output.  When the starting commit is specified as
 239'commit@{now}', output also uses 'commit@{timestamp}' notation
 240instead.  Under '\--pretty=oneline', the commit message is
 241prefixed with this information on the same line.
 242
 243--merge::
 244
 245        After a failed merge, show refs that touch files having a
 246        conflict and don't exist on all heads to merge.
 247
 248--boundary::
 249
 250        Output uninteresting commits at the boundary, which are usually
 251        not shown.
 252
 253--dense, --sparse::
 254
 255When optional paths are given, the default behaviour ('--dense') is to
 256only output commits that changes at least one of them, and also ignore
 257merges that do not touch the given paths.
 258
 259Use the '--sparse' flag to makes the command output all eligible commits
 260(still subject to count and age limitation), but apply merge
 261simplification nevertheless.
 262
 263--bisect::
 264
 265Limit output to the one commit object which is roughly halfway between
 266the included and excluded commits. Thus, if
 267
 268-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 269        $ git-rev-list --bisect foo ^bar ^baz
 270-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 271
 272outputs 'midpoint', the output of the two commands
 273
 274-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 275        $ git-rev-list foo ^midpoint
 276        $ git-rev-list midpoint ^bar ^baz
 277-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 278
 279would be of roughly the same length.  Finding the change which
 280introduces a regression is thus reduced to a binary search: repeatedly
 281generate and test new 'midpoint's until the commit chain is of length
 282one.
 283
 284--bisect-vars::
 285
 286This calculates the same as `--bisect`, but outputs text ready
 287to be eval'ed by the shell. These lines will assign the name of
 288the midpoint revision to the variable `bisect_rev`, and the
 289expected number of commits to be tested after `bisect_rev` is
 290tested to `bisect_nr`, the expected number of commits to be
 291tested if `bisect_rev` turns out to be good to `bisect_good`,
 292the expected number of commits to be tested if `bisect_rev`
 293turns out to be bad to `bisect_bad`, and the number of commits
 294we are bisecting right now to `bisect_all`.
 295
 296--
 297
 298Commit Ordering
 299~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 300
 301By default, the commits are shown in reverse chronological order.
 302
 303--topo-order::
 304
 305        This option makes them appear in topological order (i.e.
 306        descendant commits are shown before their parents).
 307
 308--date-order::
 309
 310        This option is similar to '--topo-order' in the sense that no
 311        parent comes before all of its children, but otherwise things
 312        are still ordered in the commit timestamp order.
 313
 314--reverse::
 315
 316        Output the commits in reverse order.
 317
 318Object Traversal
 319~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 320
 321These options are mostly targeted for packing of git repositories.
 322
 323--objects::
 324
 325        Print the object IDs of any object referenced by the listed
 326        commits.  'git-rev-list --objects foo ^bar' thus means "send me
 327        all object IDs which I need to download if I have the commit
 328        object 'bar', but not 'foo'".
 329
 330--objects-edge::
 331
 332        Similar to '--objects', but also print the IDs of excluded
 333        commits prefixed with a "-" character.  This is used by
 334        gitlink:git-pack-objects[1] to build "thin" pack, which records
 335        objects in deltified form based on objects contained in these
 336        excluded commits to reduce network traffic.
 337
 338--unpacked::
 339
 340        Only useful with '--objects'; print the object IDs that are not
 341        in packs.
 342
 343Author
 344------
 345Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
 346
 347Documentation
 348--------------
 349Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano, Jonas Fonseca
 350and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
 351
 352GIT
 353---
 354Part of the gitlink:git[7] suite