English ▾ Topics ▾ Version 2.20.0 ▾ git-rev-list last updated in 2.56.0

NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

git rev-list [ --max-count=<number> ]
	     [ --skip=<number> ]
	     [ --max-age=<timestamp> ]
	     [ --min-age=<timestamp> ]
	     [ --sparse ]
	     [ --merges ]
	     [ --no-merges ]
	     [ --min-parents=<number> ]
	     [ --no-min-parents ]
	     [ --max-parents=<number> ]
	     [ --no-max-parents ]
	     [ --first-parent ]
	     [ --remove-empty ]
	     [ --full-history ]
	     [ --not ]
	     [ --all ]
	     [ --branches[=<pattern>] ]
	     [ --tags[=<pattern>] ]
	     [ --remotes[=<pattern>] ]
	     [ --glob=<glob-pattern> ]
	     [ --ignore-missing ]
	     [ --stdin ]
	     [ --quiet ]
	     [ --topo-order ]
	     [ --parents ]
	     [ --timestamp ]
	     [ --left-right ]
	     [ --left-only ]
	     [ --right-only ]
	     [ --cherry-mark ]
	     [ --cherry-pick ]
	     [ --encoding=<encoding> ]
	     [ --(author|committer|grep)=<pattern> ]
	     [ --regexp-ignore-case | -i ]
	     [ --extended-regexp | -E ]
	     [ --fixed-strings | -F ]
	     [ --date=<format>]
	     [ [ --objects | --objects-edge | --objects-edge-aggressive ]
	       [ --unpacked ]
	       [ --filter=<filter-spec> [ --filter-print-omitted ] ] ]
	     [ --missing=<missing-action> ]
	     [ --pretty | --header ]
	     [ --bisect ]
	     [ --bisect-vars ]
	     [ --bisect-all ]
	     [ --merge ]
	     [ --reverse ]
	     [ --walk-reflogs ]
	     [ --no-walk ] [ --do-walk ]
	     [ --count ]
	     [ --use-bitmap-index ]
	     <commit>…​ [ -- <paths>…​ ]

DESCRIPTION

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

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

Thus, the following command:

	$ git rev-list foo bar ^baz

means "list all the commits which are reachable from foo or bar, but not from baz".

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

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

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

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

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

OPTIONS

Commit Limiting

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

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

Note that these are applied before commit ordering and formatting options, such as --reverse.

-<number>
-n <number>
--max-count=<number>

Limit the number of commits to output.

--skip=<number>

Skip number commits before starting to show the commit output.

--since=<date>
--after=<date>

Show commits more recent than a specific date.

--until=<date>
--before=<date>

Show commits older than a specific date.

--max-age=<timestamp>
--min-age=<timestamp>

Limit the commits output to specified time range.

--author=<pattern>
--committer=<pattern>

Limit the commits output to ones with author/committer header lines that match the specified pattern (regular expression). With more than one --author=<pattern>, commits whose author matches any of the given patterns are chosen (similarly for multiple --committer=<pattern>).

--grep-reflog=<pattern>

Limit the commits output to ones with reflog entries that match the specified pattern (regular expression). With more than one --grep-reflog, commits whose reflog message matches any of the given patterns are chosen. It is an error to use this option unless --walk-reflogs is in use.

--grep=<pattern>

Limit the commits output to ones with log message that matches the specified pattern (regular expression). With more than one --grep=<pattern>, commits whose message matches 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 not match the pattern specified with --grep=<pattern>.

-i
--regexp-ignore-case

Match the regular expression limiting patterns without regard to letter case.

--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 expressions instead of the default basic regular expressions.

-F
--fixed-strings

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

-P
--perl-regexp

Consider the limiting patterns to be Perl-compatible regular expressions.

Support for these types of regular expressions is an optional compile-time dependency. If Git wasn’t compiled with support for them providing 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 is exactly the same as --max-parents=1.

--min-parents=<number>
--max-parents=<number>
--no-min-parents
--no-max-parents

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

--first-parent

Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge commit. This option can give a better overview when viewing the evolution of a particular topic branch, because merges into a topic branch tend to be only about adjusting to updated upstream from time to time, and this option allows you to ignore the individual commits brought in to your history by such a merge. Cannot be combined 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, are listed on the command line as <commit>.

--branches[=<pattern>]

Pretend as if all the refs in refs/heads are listed on the command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit branches to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.

--tags[=<pattern>]

Pretend as if all the refs in refs/tags are listed on the command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit tags to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.

--remotes[=<pattern>]

Pretend as if all the refs in refs/remotes are listed on the command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit remote-tracking branches to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.

--glob=<glob-pattern>

Pretend as if all the refs matching shell glob <glob-pattern> are listed on the command line as <commit>. Leading refs/, is automatically prepended if missing. If pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.

--exclude=<glob-pattern>

Do not include refs matching <glob-pattern> that the next --all, --branches, --tags, --remotes, or --glob would otherwise consider. Repetitions of this option accumulate exclusion patterns up to the next --all, --branches, --tags, --remotes, or --glob option (other options or arguments do not clear accumulated patterns).

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

--reflog

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

--single-worktree

By default, all working trees will be examined by the following options when there are more than one (see git-worktree[1]): --all, --reflog and --indexed-objects. This option forces them to examine the current working tree only.

--ignore-missing

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

--stdin

In addition to the <commit> listed on the command line, read them from the standard input. If a -- separator is seen, stop reading commits and start reading paths to limit the result.

--quiet

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

--cherry-mark

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

--cherry-pick

Omit any commit that introduces the same change as another commit on the “other side” when the set of commits are limited with symmetric difference.

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

--cherry

A synonym for --right-only --cherry-mark --no-merges; useful to limit the output to the commits on our side and mark those that have been applied to the other side of a forked history with git log --cherry upstream...mybranch, similar to git cherry upstream mybranch.

-g
--walk-reflogs

Instead of walking the commit ancestry chain, walk reflog entries from the most recent one to older ones. When this option is used you cannot specify commits to exclude (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 information taken from the reflog. The reflog designator in the output may be shown as ref@{Nth} (where Nth is the reverse-chronological index in the reflog) or as ref@{timestamp} (with the timestamp for that entry), depending on a few rules:

  1. If the starting point is specified as ref@{Nth}, show the index format.

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

  3. If neither was used, but --date was given on the command line, show the timestamp in the format requested by --date.

  4. Otherwise, show the index format.

+ Under --pretty=oneline, the commit message is prefixed 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 a conflict and don’t exist on all heads to merge.

--boundary

Output excluded boundary commits. Boundary commits are prefixed with -.

--use-bitmap-index

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

--progress=<header>

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

The following options select the commits to be shown:

<paths>

Commits modifying the given <paths> 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 the final state of the tree. Simplest because it prunes some side branches if the end result is the same (i.e. merging branches with 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 a meaningful history.

--sparse

All commits in the simplified history are shown.

--simplify-merges

Additional option to --full-history to remove some needless merges from the resulting history, as there are no selected commits 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 exist directly on the ancestry chain between the commit1 and commit2, 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 commits that modify foo !TREESAME, and the rest TREESAME. (In a diff filtered for foo, they look different and equal, respectively.)

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

	  .-A---M---N---O---P---Q
	 /     /   /   /   /   /
	I     B   C   D   E   Y
	 \   /   /   /   /   /
	  `-------------'   X

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

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

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

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

Default mode

Commits are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent (though this can be changed, see --sparse below). If the commit was a merge, and it was TREESAME to one parent, follow only that parent. (Even if there are several TREESAME parents, follow only one of them.) Otherwise, follow all parents.

This results in:

	  .-A---N---O
	 /     /   /
	I---------D

Note how the rule to only follow the TREESAME parent, if one is available, removed B from consideration entirely. C was considered via N, but is TREESAME. Root commits are compared to an empty tree, so I is !TREESAME.

Parent/child relations are only visible with --parents, but that does not affect the commits selected in default mode, so we have shown the parent lines.

--full-history without parent rewriting

This mode differs from the default in one point: always follow all 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 are included, this does not imply that the merge itself is! In the example, we get

	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 others do not appear.

Note that without parent rewriting, it is not really possible to talk about the parent/child relationships between the commits, so we show them 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 included themselves. This results in

	  .-A---M---N---O---P---Q
	 /     /   /   /   /
	I     B   /   D   /
	 \   /   /   /   /
	  `-------------'

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