1GIT-SHORTLOG(1) Git Manual GIT-SHORTLOG(1)
2
6 git-shortlog - Summarize 'git log' output
7
9 git shortlog [<options>] [<revision range>] [[--] <path>...]
10 git log --pretty=short | git shortlog [<options>]
11
13 Summarizes git log output in a format suitable for inclusion in release
14 announcements. Each commit will be grouped by author and title.
15 Additionally, "[PATCH]" will be stripped from the commit description.
17 If no revisions are passed on the command line and either standard
19 input is not a terminal or there is no current branch, git shortlog
20 will output a summary of the log read from standard input, without
21 reference to the current repository.
22
24 -n, --numbered
25 Sort output according to the number of commits per author instead
26 of author alphabetic order.
27 -s, --summary
29 Suppress commit description and provide a commit count summary
30 only.
31 -e, --email
33 Show the email address of each author.
34 --format[=<format>]
36 Instead of the commit subject, use some other information to
37 describe each commit. <format> can be any string accepted by the
38 --format option of git log, such as * [%h] %s. (See the "PRETTY
39 FORMATS" section of git-log(1).)
40 Each pretty-printed commit will be rewrapped before it is shown.
42 --group=<type>
44 Group commits based on <type>. If no --group option is specified,
45 the default is author. <type> is one of:
46 • author, commits are grouped by author
48 • committer, commits are grouped by committer (the same as -c)
50 • trailer:<field>, the <field> is interpreted as a
52 case-insensitive commit message trailer (see git-interpret-
53 trailers(1)). For example, if your project uses Reviewed-by
54 trailers, you might want to see who has been reviewing with git
55 shortlog -ns --group=trailer:reviewed-by.
56 Note that commits that do not include the trailer will not be
58 counted. Likewise, commits with multiple trailers (e.g.,
59 multiple signoffs) may be counted more than once (but only once
60 per unique trailer value in that commit).
61 Shortlog will attempt to parse each trailer value as a name
63 <email> identity. If successful, the mailmap is applied and the
64 email is omitted unless the --email option is specified. If the
65 value cannot be parsed as an identity, it will be taken
66 literally and completely.
67 If --group is specified multiple times, commits are counted under
69 each value (but again, only once per unique value in that commit).
70 For example, git shortlog --group=author
71 --group=trailer:co-authored-by counts both authors and co-authors.
72 -c, --committer
74 This is an alias for --group=committer.
75 -w[<width>[,<indent1>[,<indent2>]]]
77 Linewrap the output by wrapping each line at width. The first line
78 of each entry is indented by indent1 spaces, and the second and
79 subsequent lines are indented by indent2 spaces. width, indent1,
80 and indent2 default to 76, 6 and 9 respectively.
81 If width is 0 (zero) then indent the lines of the output without
83 wrapping them.
84 <revision range>
86 Show only commits in the specified revision range. When no
87 <revision range> is specified, it defaults to HEAD (i.e. the whole
88 history leading to the current commit). origin..HEAD specifies all
89 the commits reachable from the current commit (i.e. HEAD), but not
90 from origin. For a complete list of ways to spell <revision range>,
91 see the "Specifying Ranges" section of gitrevisions(7).
92 [--] <path>...
94 Consider only commits that are enough to explain how the files that
95 match the specified paths came to be.
96 Paths may need to be prefixed with -- to separate them from options
98 or the revision range, when confusion arises.
99 Commit Limiting
101 Besides specifying a range of commits that should be listed using the
102 special notations explained in the description, additional commit
103 limiting may be applied.
104 Using more options generally further limits the output (e.g.
106 --since=<date1> limits to commits newer than <date1>, and using it with
107 --grep=<pattern> further limits to commits whose log message has a line
108 that matches <pattern>), unless otherwise noted.
109 Note that these are applied before commit ordering and formatting
111 options, such as --reverse.
112 -<number>, -n <number>, --max-count=<number>
114 Limit the number of commits to output.
115 --skip=<number>
117 Skip number commits before starting to show the commit output.
118 --since=<date>, --after=<date>
120 Show commits more recent than a specific date.
121 --until=<date>, --before=<date>
123 Show commits older than a specific date.
124 --author=<pattern>, --committer=<pattern>
126 Limit the commits output to ones with author/committer header lines
127 that match the specified pattern (regular expression). With more
128 than one --author=<pattern>, commits whose author matches any of
129 the given patterns are chosen (similarly for multiple
130 --committer=<pattern>).
131 --grep-reflog=<pattern>
133 Limit the commits output to ones with reflog entries that match the
134 specified pattern (regular expression). With more than one
135 --grep-reflog, commits whose reflog message matches any of the
136 given patterns are chosen. It is an error to use this option unless
137 --walk-reflogs is in use.
138 --grep=<pattern>
140 Limit the commits output to ones with log message that matches the
141 specified pattern (regular expression). With more than one
142 --grep=<pattern>, commits whose message matches any of the given
143 patterns are chosen (but see --all-match).
144 When --notes is in effect, the message from the notes is matched as
146 if it were part of the log message.
147 --all-match
149 Limit the commits output to ones that match all given --grep,
150 instead of ones that match at least one.
151 --invert-grep
153 Limit the commits output to ones with log message that do not match
154 the pattern specified with --grep=<pattern>.
155 -i, --regexp-ignore-case
157 Match the regular expression limiting patterns without regard to
158 letter case.
159 --basic-regexp
161 Consider the limiting patterns to be basic regular expressions;
162 this is the default.
163 -E, --extended-regexp
165 Consider the limiting patterns to be extended regular expressions
166 instead of the default basic regular expressions.
167 -F, --fixed-strings
169 Consider the limiting patterns to be fixed strings (don’t interpret
170 pattern as a regular expression).
171 -P, --perl-regexp
173 Consider the limiting patterns to be Perl-compatible regular
174 expressions.
175 Support for these types of regular expressions is an optional
177 compile-time dependency. If Git wasn’t compiled with support for
178 them providing this option will cause it to die.
179 --remove-empty
181 Stop when a given path disappears from the tree.
182 --merges
184 Print only merge commits. This is exactly the same as
185 --min-parents=2.
186 --no-merges
188 Do not print commits with more than one parent. This is exactly the
189 same as --max-parents=1.
190 --min-parents=<number>, --max-parents=<number>, --no-min-parents,
192 --no-max-parents
193 Show only commits which have at least (or at most) that many parent
194 commits. In particular, --max-parents=1 is the same as --no-merges,
195 --min-parents=2 is the same as --merges. --max-parents=0 gives all
196 root commits and --min-parents=3 all octopus merges.
197 --no-min-parents and --no-max-parents reset these limits (to no
199 limit) again. Equivalent forms are --min-parents=0 (any commit has
200 0 or more parents) and --max-parents=-1 (negative numbers denote no
201 upper limit).
202 --first-parent
204 Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit.
205 This option can give a better overview when viewing the evolution
206 of a particular topic branch, because merges into a topic branch
207 tend to be only about adjusting to updated upstream from time to
208 time, and this option allows you to ignore the individual commits
209 brought in to your history by such a merge.
210 --not
212 Reverses the meaning of the ^ prefix (or lack thereof) for all
213 following revision specifiers, up to the next --not.
214 --all
216 Pretend as if all the refs in refs/, along with HEAD, are listed on
217 the command line as <commit>.
218 --branches[=<pattern>]
220 Pretend as if all the refs in refs/heads are listed on the command
221 line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit branches to ones
222 matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the
223 end is implied.
224 --tags[=<pattern>]
226 Pretend as if all the refs in refs/tags are listed on the command
227 line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit tags to ones
228 matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the
229 end is implied.
230 --remotes[=<pattern>]
232 Pretend as if all the refs in refs/remotes are listed on the
233 command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit
234 remote-tracking branches to ones matching given shell glob. If
235 pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.
236 --glob=<glob-pattern>
238 Pretend as if all the refs matching shell glob <glob-pattern> are
239 listed on the command line as <commit>. Leading refs/, is
240 automatically prepended if missing. If pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /*
241 at the end is implied.
242 --exclude=<glob-pattern>
244 Do not include refs matching <glob-pattern> that the next --all,
245 --branches, --tags, --remotes, or --glob would otherwise consider.
246 Repetitions of this option accumulate exclusion patterns up to the
247 next --all, --branches, --tags, --remotes, or --glob option (other
248 options or arguments do not clear accumulated patterns).
249 The patterns given should not begin with refs/heads, refs/tags, or
251 refs/remotes when applied to --branches, --tags, or --remotes,
252 respectively, and they must begin with refs/ when applied to --glob
253 or --all. If a trailing /* is intended, it must be given
254 explicitly.
255 --reflog
257 Pretend as if all objects mentioned by reflogs are listed on the
258 command line as <commit>.
259 --alternate-refs
261 Pretend as if all objects mentioned as ref tips of alternate
262 repositories were listed on the command line. An alternate
263 repository is any repository whose object directory is specified in
264 objects/info/alternates. The set of included objects may be
265 modified by core.alternateRefsCommand, etc. See git-config(1).
266 --single-worktree
268 By default, all working trees will be examined by the following
269 options when there are more than one (see git-worktree(1)): --all,
270 --reflog and --indexed-objects. This option forces them to examine
271 the current working tree only.
272 --ignore-missing
274 Upon seeing an invalid object name in the input, pretend as if the
275 bad input was not given.
276 --bisect
278 Pretend as if the bad bisection ref refs/bisect/bad was listed and
279 as if it was followed by --not and the good bisection refs
280 refs/bisect/good-* on the command line.
281 --stdin
283 In addition to the <commit> listed on the command line, read them
284 from the standard input. If a -- separator is seen, stop reading
285 commits and start reading paths to limit the result.
286 --cherry-mark
288 Like --cherry-pick (see below) but mark equivalent commits with =
289 rather than omitting them, and inequivalent ones with +.
290 --cherry-pick
292 Omit any commit that introduces the same change as another commit
293 on the “other side” when the set of commits are limited with
294 symmetric difference.
295 For example, if you have two branches, A and B, a usual way to list
297 all commits on only one side of them is with --left-right (see the
298 example below in the description of the --left-right option).
299 However, it shows the commits that were cherry-picked from the
300 other branch (for example, “3rd on b” may be cherry-picked from
301 branch A). With this option, such pairs of commits are excluded
302 from the output.
303 --left-only, --right-only
305 List only commits on the respective side of a symmetric difference,
306 i.e. only those which would be marked < resp. > by --left-right.
307 For example, --cherry-pick --right-only A...B omits those commits
309 from B which are in A or are patch-equivalent to a commit in A. In
310 other words, this lists the + commits from git cherry A B. More
311 precisely, --cherry-pick --right-only --no-merges gives the exact
312 list.
313 --cherry
315 A synonym for --right-only --cherry-mark --no-merges; useful to
316 limit the output to the commits on our side and mark those that
317 have been applied to the other side of a forked history with git
318 log --cherry upstream...mybranch, similar to git cherry upstream
319 mybranch.
320 -g, --walk-reflogs
322 Instead of walking the commit ancestry chain, walk reflog entries
323 from the most recent one to older ones. When this option is used
324 you cannot specify commits to exclude (that is, ^commit,
325 commit1..commit2, and commit1...commit2 notations cannot be used).
326 With --pretty format other than oneline and reference (for obvious
328 reasons), this causes the output to have two extra lines of
329 information taken from the reflog. The reflog designator in the
330 output may be shown as ref@{Nth} (where Nth is the
331 reverse-chronological index in the reflog) or as ref@{timestamp}
332 (with the timestamp for that entry), depending on a few rules:
333 1. If the starting point is specified as ref@{Nth}, show the index
335 format.
336 2. If the starting point was specified as ref@{now}, show the
338 timestamp format.
339 3. If neither was used, but --date was given on the command line,
341 show the timestamp in the format requested by --date.
342 4. Otherwise, show the index format.
344 Under --pretty=oneline, the commit message is prefixed with this
346 information on the same line. This option cannot be combined with
347 --reverse. See also git-reflog(1).
348 Under --pretty=reference, this information will not be shown at
350 all.
351 --merge
353 After a failed merge, show refs that touch files having a conflict
354 and don’t exist on all heads to merge.
355 --boundary
357 Output excluded boundary commits. Boundary commits are prefixed
358 with -.
359 History Simplification
361 Sometimes you are only interested in parts of the history, for example
362 the commits modifying a particular <path>. But there are two parts of
363 History Simplification, one part is selecting the commits and the other
364 is how to do it, as there are various strategies to simplify the
365 history.
366 The following options select the commits to be shown:
368 <paths>
370 Commits modifying the given <paths> are selected.
371 --simplify-by-decoration
373 Commits that are referred by some branch or tag are selected.
374 Note that extra commits can be shown to give a meaningful history.
376 The following options affect the way the simplification is performed:
378 Default mode
380 Simplifies the history to the simplest history explaining the final
381 state of the tree. Simplest because it prunes some side branches if
382 the end result is the same (i.e. merging branches with the same
383 content)
384 --show-pulls
386 Include all commits from the default mode, but also any merge
387 commits that are not TREESAME to the first parent but are TREESAME
388 to a later parent. This mode is helpful for showing the merge
389 commits that "first introduced" a change to a branch.
390 --full-history
392 Same as the default mode, but does not prune some history.
393 --dense
395 Only the selected commits are shown, plus some to have a meaningful
396 history.
397 --sparse
399 All commits in the simplified history are shown.
400 --simplify-merges
402 Additional option to --full-history to remove some needless merges
403 from the resulting history, as there are no selected commits
404 contributing to this merge.
405 --ancestry-path
407 When given a range of commits to display (e.g. commit1..commit2 or
408 commit2 ^commit1), only display commits that exist directly on the
409 ancestry chain between the commit1 and commit2, i.e. commits that
410 are both descendants of commit1, and ancestors of commit2.
411 A more detailed explanation follows.
413 Suppose you specified foo as the <paths>. We shall call commits that
415 modify foo !TREESAME, and the rest TREESAME. (In a diff filtered for
416 foo, they look different and equal, respectively.)
417 In the following, we will always refer to the same example history to
419 illustrate the differences between simplification settings. We assume
420 that you are filtering for a file foo in this commit graph:
421 .-A---M---N---O---P---Q
423 / / / / / /
424 I B C D E Y
425 \ / / / / /
426 `-------------' X
427 The horizontal line of history A---Q is taken to be the first parent of
429 each merge. The commits are:
430 • I is the initial commit, in which foo exists with contents “asdf”,
432 and a file quux exists with contents “quux”. Initial commits are
433 compared to an empty tree, so I is !TREESAME.
434 • In A, foo contains just “foo”.
436 • B contains the same change as A. Its merge M is trivial and hence
438 TREESAME to all parents.
439 • C does not change foo, but its merge N changes it to “foobar”, so
441 it is not TREESAME to any parent.
442 • D sets foo to “baz”. Its merge O combines the strings from N and D
444 to “foobarbaz”; i.e., it is not TREESAME to any parent.
445 • E changes quux to “xyzzy”, and its merge P combines the strings to
447 “quux xyzzy”. P is TREESAME to O, but not to E.
448 • X is an independent root commit that added a new file side, and Y
450 modified it. Y is TREESAME to X. Its merge Q added side to P, and
451 Q is TREESAME to P, but not to Y.
452 rev-list walks backwards through history, including or excluding
454 commits based on whether --full-history and/or parent rewriting (via
455 --parents or --children) are used. The following settings are
456 available.
457 Default mode
459 Commits are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent (though
460 this can be changed, see --sparse below). If the commit was a
461 merge, and it was TREESAME to one parent, follow only that parent.
462 (Even if there are several TREESAME parents, follow only one of
463 them.) Otherwise, follow all parents.
464 This results in:
466 .-A---N---O
468 / / /
469 I---------D
470 Note how the rule to only follow the TREESAME parent, if one is
472 available, removed B from consideration entirely. C was considered
473 via N, but is TREESAME. Root commits are compared to an empty tree,
474 so I is !TREESAME.
475 Parent/child relations are only visible with --parents, but that
477 does not affect the commits selected in default mode, so we have
478 shown the parent lines.
479 --full-history without parent rewriting
481 This mode differs from the default in one point: always follow all
482 parents of a merge, even if it is TREESAME to one of them. Even if
483 more than one side of the merge has commits that are included, this
484 does not imply that the merge itself is! In the example, we get
485 I A B N D O P Q
487 M was excluded because it is TREESAME to both parents. E, C and B
489 were all walked, but only B was !TREESAME, so the others do not
490 appear.
491 Note that without parent rewriting, it is not really possible to
493 talk about the parent/child relationships between the commits, so
494 we show them disconnected.
495 --full-history with parent rewriting
497 Ordinary commits are only included if they are !TREESAME (though
498 this can be changed, see --sparse below).
499 Merges are always included. However, their parent list is
501 rewritten: Along each parent, prune away commits that are not
502 included themselves. This results in
503 .-A---M---N---O---P---Q
505 / / / / /
506 I B / D /
507 \ / / / /
508 `-------------'
509 Compare to --full-history without rewriting above. Note that E was
511 pruned away because it is TREESAME, but the parent list of P was
512 rewritten to contain E's parent I. The same happened for C and N,
513 and X, Y and Q.
514 In addition to the above settings, you can change whether TREESAME
516 affects inclusion:
517 --dense
519 Commits that are walked are included if they are not TREESAME to
520 any parent.
521 --sparse
523 All commits that are walked are included.
524 Note that without --full-history, this still simplifies merges: if
526 one of the parents is TREESAME, we follow only that one, so the
527 other sides of the merge are never walked.
528 --simplify-merges
530 First, build a history graph in the same way that --full-history
531 with parent rewriting does (see above).
532 Then simplify each commit C to its replacement C' in the final
534 history according to the following rules:
535 • Set C' to C.
537 • Replace each parent P of C' with its simplification P'. In the
539 process, drop parents that are ancestors of other parents or
540 that are root commits TREESAME to an empty tree, and remove
541 duplicates, but take care to never drop all parents that we are
542 TREESAME to.
543 • If after this parent rewriting, C' is a root or merge commit
545 (has zero or >1 parents), a boundary commit, or !TREESAME, it
546 remains. Otherwise, it is replaced with its only parent.
547 The effect of this is best shown by way of comparing to
549 --full-history with parent rewriting. The example turns into:
550 .-A---M---N---O
552 / / /
553 I B D
554 \ / /
555 `---------'
556 Note the major differences in N, P, and Q over --full-history:
558 • N's parent list had I removed, because it is an ancestor of the
560 other parent M. Still, N remained because it is !TREESAME.
561 • P's parent list similarly had I removed. P was then removed
563 completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME.
564 • Q's parent list had Y simplified to X. X was then removed,
566 because it was a TREESAME root. Q was then removed completely,
567 because it had one parent and is TREESAME.
568 There is another simplification mode available:
570 --ancestry-path
572 Limit the displayed commits to those directly on the ancestry chain
573 between the “from” and “to” commits in the given commit range. I.e.
574 only display commits that are ancestor of the “to” commit and
575 descendants of the “from” commit.
576 As an example use case, consider the following commit history:
578 D---E-------F
580 / \ \
581 B---C---G---H---I---J
582 / \
583 A-------K---------------L--M
584 A regular D..M computes the set of commits that are ancestors of M,
586 but excludes the ones that are ancestors of D. This is useful to
587 see what happened to the history leading to M since D, in the sense
588 that “what does M have that did not exist in D”. The result in this
589 example would be all the commits, except A and B (and D itself, of
590 course).
591 When we want to find out what commits in M are contaminated with
593 the bug introduced by D and need fixing, however, we might want to
594 view only the subset of D..M that are actually descendants of D,
595 i.e. excluding C and K. This is exactly what the --ancestry-path
596 option does. Applied to the D..M range, it results in:
597 E-------F
599 \ \
600 G---H---I---J
601 \
602 L--M
603 Before discussing another option, --show-pulls, we need to create a new
605 example history.
606 A common problem users face when looking at simplified history is that
608 a commit they know changed a file somehow does not appear in the file’s
609 simplified history. Let’s demonstrate a new example and show how
610 options such as --full-history and --simplify-merges works in that
611 case:
612 .-A---M-----C--N---O---P
614 / / \ \ \/ / /
615 I B \ R-'`-Z' /
616 \ / \/ /
617 \ / /\ /
618 `---X--' `---Y--'
619 For this example, suppose I created file.txt which was modified by A,
621 B, and X in different ways. The single-parent commits C, Z, and Y do
622 not change file.txt. The merge commit M was created by resolving the
623 merge conflict to include both changes from A and B and hence is not
624 TREESAME to either. The merge commit R, however, was created by
625 ignoring the contents of file.txt at M and taking only the contents of
626 file.txt at X. Hence, R is TREESAME to X but not M. Finally, the
627 natural merge resolution to create N is to take the contents of
628 file.txt at R, so N is TREESAME to R but not C. The merge commits O and
629 P are TREESAME to their first parents, but not to their second parents,
630 Z and Y respectively.
631 When using the default mode, N and R both have a TREESAME parent, so
633 those edges are walked and the others are ignored. The resulting
634 history graph is:
635 I---X
637 When using --full-history, Git walks every edge. This will discover the
639 commits A and B and the merge M, but also will reveal the merge commits
640 O and P. With parent rewriting, the resulting graph is:
641 .-A---M--------N---O---P
643 / / \ \ \/ / /
644 I B \ R-'`--' /
645 \ / \/ /
646 \ / /\ /
647 `---X--' `------'
648 Here, the merge commits O and P contribute extra noise, as they did not
650 actually contribute a change to file.txt. They only merged a topic that
651 was based on an older version of file.txt. This is a common issue in
652 repositories using a workflow where many contributors work in parallel
653 and merge their topic branches along a single trunk: manu unrelated
654 merges appear in the --full-history results.
655 When using the --simplify-merges option, the commits O and P disappear
657 from the results. This is because the rewritten second parents of O and
658 P are reachable from their first parents. Those edges are removed and
659 then the commits look like single-parent commits that are TREESAME to
660 their parent. This also happens to the commit N, resulting in a history
661 view as follows:
662 .-A---M--.
664 / / \
665 I B R
666 \ / /
667 \ / /
668 `---X--'
669 In this view, we see all of the important single-parent changes from A,
671 B, and X. We also see the carefully-resolved merge M and the
672 not-so-carefully-resolved merge R. This is usually enough information
673 to determine why the commits A and B "disappeared" from history in the
674 default view. However, there are a few issues with this approach.
675 The first issue is performance. Unlike any previous option, the
677 --simplify-merges option requires walking the entire commit history
678 before returning a single result. This can make the option difficult to
679 use for very large repositories.
680 The second issue is one of auditing. When many contributors are working
682 on the same repository, it is important which merge commits introduced
683 a change into an important branch. The problematic merge R above is not
684 likely to be the merge commit that was used to merge into an important
685 branch. Instead, the merge N was used to merge R and X into the
686 important branch. This commit may have information about why the change
687 X came to override the changes from A and B in its commit message.
688 --show-pulls
690 In addition to the commits shown in the default history, show each
691 merge commit that is not TREESAME to its first parent but is
692 TREESAME to a later parent.
693 When a merge commit is included by --show-pulls, the merge is
695 treated as if it "pulled" the change from another branch. When
696 using --show-pulls on this example (and no other options) the
697 resulting graph is:
698 I---X---R---N
700 Here, the merge commits R and N are included because they pulled
702 the commits X and R into the base branch, respectively. These
703 merges are the reason the commits A and B do not appear in the
704 default history.
705 When --show-pulls is paired with --simplify-merges, the graph
707 includes all of the necessary information:
708 .-A---M--. N
710 / / \ /
711 I B R
712 \ / /
713 \ / /
714 `---X--'
715 Notice that since M is reachable from R, the edge from N to M was
717 simplified away. However, N still appears in the history as an
718 important commit because it "pulled" the change R into the main
719 branch.
720 The --simplify-by-decoration option allows you to view only the big
722 picture of the topology of the history, by omitting commits that are
723 not referenced by tags. Commits are marked as !TREESAME (in other
724 words, kept after history simplification rules described above) if (1)
725 they are referenced by tags, or (2) they change the contents of the
726 paths given on the command line. All other commits are marked as
727 TREESAME (subject to be simplified away).
728
730 See gitmailmap(5).
731 Note that if git shortlog is run outside of a repository (to process
733 log contents on standard input), it will look for a .mailmap file in
734 the current directory.
735
737 Part of the git(1) suite
738Git 2.31.1 2021-03-26 GIT-SHORTLOG(1)