English ▾ Topics ▾ Version 2.43.0 ▾ git-blame last updated in 2.56.0

NAME

git-blame - Show what revision and author last modified each line of a file

SYNOPSIS

git blame [-c] [-b] [-l] [--root] [-t] [-f] [-n] [-s] [-e] [-p] [-w] [--incremental]
	    [-L <range>] [-S <revs-file>] [-M] [-C] [-C] [-C] [--since=<date>]
	    [--ignore-rev <rev>] [--ignore-revs-file <file>]
	    [--color-lines] [--color-by-age] [--progress] [--abbrev=<n>]
	    [ --contents <file> ] [<rev> | --reverse <rev>..<rev>] [--] <file>

DESCRIPTION

Annotates each line in the given file with information from the revision which last modified the line. Optionally, start annotating from the given revision.

When specified one or more times, -L restricts annotation to the requested lines.

The origin of lines is automatically followed across whole-file renames (currently there is no option to turn the rename-following off). To follow lines moved from one file to another, or to follow lines that were copied and pasted from another file, etc., see the -C and -M options.

The report does not tell you anything about lines which have been deleted or replaced; you need to use a tool such as git diff or the "pickaxe" interface briefly mentioned in the following paragraph.

Apart from supporting file annotation, Git also supports searching the development history for when a code snippet occurred in a change. This makes it possible to track when a code snippet was added to a file, moved or copied between files, and eventually deleted or replaced. It works by searching for a text string in the diff. A small example of the pickaxe interface that searches for blame_usage:

$ git log --pretty=oneline -S'blame_usage'
5040f17eba15504bad66b14a645bddd9b015ebb7 blame -S <ancestry-file>
ea4c7f9bf69e781dd0cd88d2bccb2bf5cc15c9a7 git-blame: Make the output

OPTIONS

-b

Show blank SHA-1 for boundary commits. This can also be controlled via the blame.blankBoundary config option.

--root

Do not treat root commits as boundaries. This can also be controlled via the blame.showRoot config option.

--show-stats

Include additional statistics at the end of blame output.

-L <start>,<end>
-L :<funcname>

Annotate only the line range given by <start>,<end>, or by the function name regex <funcname>. May be specified multiple times. Overlapping ranges are allowed.

<start> and <end> are optional. -L <start> or -L <start>, spans from <start> to end of file. -L ,<end> spans from start of file to <end>.

<start> and <end> can take one of these forms:

  • number

    If <start> or <end> is a number, it specifies an absolute line number (lines count from 1).

  • /regex/

    This form will use the first line matching the given POSIX regex. If <start> is a regex, it will search from the end of the previous -L range, if any, otherwise from the start of file. If <start> is ^/regex/, it will search from the start of file. If <end> is a regex, it will search starting at the line given by <start>.

  • +offset or -offset

    This is only valid for <end> and will specify a number of lines before or after the line given by <start>.

If :<funcname> is given in place of <start> and <end>, it is a regular expression that denotes the range from the first funcname line that matches <funcname>, up to the next funcname line. :<funcname> searches from the end of the previous -L range, if any, otherwise from the start of file. ^:<funcname> searches from the start of file. The function names are determined in the same way as git diff works out patch hunk headers (see Defining a custom hunk-header in gitattributes[5]).

-l

Show long rev (Default: off).

-t

Show raw timestamp (Default: off).

-S <revs-file>

Use revisions from revs-file instead of calling git-rev-list[1].

--reverse <rev>..<rev>