lab 10 History

Goals

Getting a listing of what changes have been made is the function of the git log command.

Execute:

git log

You should see …

Output:

$ git log
commit 1f7ec5eaa8f37c2770dae3b984c55a1531fcc9e7
Author: Jim Weirich <jim (at) neo.com>
Date:   Sat Apr 13 15:20:42 2013 -0400

    Added a comment

commit 582495ae59ca91bca156a3372a72f88f6261698b
Author: Jim Weirich <jim (at) neo.com>
Date:   Sat Apr 13 15:20:42 2013 -0400

    Added a default value

commit 323e28d99a07d404c04f27eb6e415d4b8ab1d615
Author: Jim Weirich <jim (at) neo.com>
Date:   Sat Apr 13 15:20:42 2013 -0400

    Using ARGV

commit 94164160adf8faa3119b409fcfcd13d0a0eb8020
Author: Jim Weirich <jim (at) neo.com>
Date:   Sat Apr 13 15:20:42 2013 -0400

    First Commit

Here is a list of all four commits that we have made to the repository so far.

One Line Histories 01

You have a great deal of control over exactly what the log command displays. I like the one line format:

Execute:

git log --pretty=oneline

You should see …

Output:

$ git log --pretty=oneline
1f7ec5eaa8f37c2770dae3b984c55a1531fcc9e7 Added a comment
582495ae59ca91bca156a3372a72f88f6261698b Added a default value
323e28d99a07d404c04f27eb6e415d4b8ab1d615 Using ARGV
94164160adf8faa3119b409fcfcd13d0a0eb8020 First Commit

Controlling Which Entries are Displayed 02

There are a lot of options for selecting which entries are displayed in the log. Play around with the following options:

git log --pretty=oneline --max-count=2
git log --pretty=oneline --since='5 minutes ago'
git log --pretty=oneline --until='5 minutes ago'
git log --pretty=oneline --author=<your name>
git log --pretty=oneline --all

See man git-log for all the details.

Getting Fancy 03

Here’s what I use to review the changes made in the last week. I’ll add --author=jim if I only want to see changes I made.

git log --all --pretty=format:'%h %cd %s (%an)' --since='7 days ago'

The Ultimate Log Format 04

Over time, I’ve decided that I like the following log format for most of my work.

Execute:

git log --pretty=format:'%h %ad | %s%d [%an]' --graph --date=short

It looks like this:

Output:

$ git log --pretty=format:'%h %ad | %s%d [%an]' --graph --date=short
* 1f7ec5e 2013-04-13 | Added a comment (HEAD, master) [Jim Weirich]
* 582495a 2013-04-13 | Added a default value [Jim Weirich]
* 323e28d 2013-04-13 | Using ARGV [Jim Weirich]
* 9416416 2013-04-13 | First Commit [Jim Weirich]

Let’s look at it in detail:

This is a lot to type every time you want to see the log. Fortunately we will learn about git aliases in the next lab.

Other Tools 05

Both gitx (for Macs) and gitk (any platform) are useful in exploring log history.

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