GIT-DIFF-TREE(1) Git Manual GIT-DIFF-TREE(1)
NAME
git-diff-tree - Compares the content and mode of blobs found via two tree objects
SYNOPSIS
git diff-tree [--stdin] [-m] [-s] [-v] [--no-commit-id] [--pretty]
[-t] [-r] [-c | --cc] [--combined-all-paths] [--root] [--merge-base]
[] [] [...]
DESCRIPTION
Compare the content and mode of blobs found via two tree objects.
If there is only one given, the commit is compared with its parents (see --stdin below).
Note that git diff-tree can use the tree encapsulated in a commit object.
OPTIONS
-p, -u, --patch
Generate patch (see the section called “GENERATING PATCH TEXT WITH -P”).
-s, --no-patch
Suppress all output from the diff machinery. Useful for commands like git show that show the
patch by default to squelch their output, or to cancel the effect of options like --patch, --stat
earlier on the command line in an alias.
-U, --unified=
Generate diffs with lines of context instead of the usual three. Implies --patch.
--output=
Output to a specific file instead of stdout.
--output-indicator-new=, --output-indicator-old=, --output-indicator-context=
Specify the character used to indicate new, old or context lines in the generated patch. Normally
they are +, - and ' ' respectively.
--raw
Generate the diff in raw format. This is the default.
--patch-with-raw
Synonym for -p --raw.
--indent-heuristic
Enable the heuristic that shifts diff hunk boundaries to make patches easier to read. This is the
default.
--no-indent-heuristic
Disable the indent heuristic.
--minimal
Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced.
--patience
Generate a diff using the "patience diff" algorithm.
--histogram
Generate a diff using the "histogram diff" algorithm.
--anchored=
Generate a diff using the "anchored diff" algorithm.
This option may be specified more than once.
If a line exists in both the source and destination, exists only once, and starts with ,
this algorithm attempts to prevent it from appearing as a deletion or addition in the output. It
uses the "patience diff" algorithm internally.
--diff-algorithm=(patience|minimal|histogram|myers)
Choose a diff algorithm. The variants are as follows:
default, myers
The basic greedy diff algorithm. Currently, this is the default.
minimal
Spend extra time to make sure the smallest possible diff is produced.
patience
Use "patience diff" algorithm when generating patches.
histogram
This algorithm extends the patience algorithm to "support low-occurrence common elements".
For instance, if you configured the diff.algorithm variable to a non-default value and want to
use the default one, then you have to use --diff-algorithm=default option.
--stat[=[,[,]]]
Generate a diffstat. By default, as much space as necessary will be used for the filename part,
and the rest for the graph part. Maximum width defaults to terminal width, or 80 columns if not
connected to a terminal, and can be overridden by . The width of the filename part can be
limited by giving another width after a comma or by setting
diff.statNameWidth=. The width of the graph part can be limited by using
--stat-graph-width= or by setting diff.statGraphWidth=. Using --stat or
--stat-graph-width affects all commands generating a stat graph, while setting diff.statNameWidth
or diff.statGraphWidth does not affect git format-patch. By giving a third parameter , you
can limit the output to the first lines, followed by ... if there are more.
These parameters can also be set individually with --stat-width=,
--stat-name-width= and --stat-count=.
--compact-summary
Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as file creations or deletions
("new" or "gone", optionally +l if it’s a symlink) and mode changes (+x or -x for adding or
removing executable bit respectively) in diffstat. The information is put between the filename
part and the graph part. Implies --stat.
--numstat
Similar to --stat, but shows number of added and deleted lines in decimal notation and pathname
without abbreviation, to make it more machine friendly. For binary files, outputs two - instead
of saying 0 0.
--shortstat
Output only the last line of the --stat format containing total number of modified files, as well
as number of added and deleted lines.
-X [,...], --dirstat[=,...]
Output the distribution of relative amount of changes for each sub-directory. The behavior of
--dirstat can be customized by passing it a comma separated list of parameters. The defaults are
controlled by the diff.dirstat configuration variable (see git-config(1)). The following
parameters are available:
changes
Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the lines that have been removed from the source, or
added to the destination. This ignores the amount of pure code movements within a file. In
other words, rearranging lines in a file is not counted as much as other changes. This is the
default behavior when no parameter is given.
lines
Compute the dirstat numbers by doing the regular line-based diff analysis, and summing the
removed/added line counts. (For binary files, count 64-byte chunks instead, since binary
files have no natural concept of lines). This is a more expensive --dirstat behavior than the
changes behavior, but it does count rearranged lines within a file as much as other changes.
The resulting output is consistent with what you get from the other --*stat options.
files
Compute the dirstat numbers by counting the number of files changed. Each changed file counts
equally in the dirstat analysis. This is the computationally cheapest --dirstat behavior,
since it does not have to look at the file contents at all.
cumulative
Count changes in a child directory for the parent directory as well. Note that when using
cumulative, the sum of the percentages reported may exceed 100%. The default (non-cumulative)
behavior can be specified with the noncumulative parameter.
An integer parameter specifies a cut-off percent (3% by default). Directories contributing
less than this percentage of the changes are not shown in the output.
Example: The following will count changed files, while ignoring directories with less than 10% of
the total amount of changed files, and accumulating child directory counts in the parent
directories: --dirstat=files,10,cumulative.
--cumulative
Synonym for --dirstat=cumulative.
--dirstat-by-file[=,...]
Synonym for --dirstat=files,,....
--summary
Output a condensed summary of extended header information such as creations, renames and mode
changes.
--patch-with-stat
Synonym for -p --stat.
-z
When --raw, --numstat, --name-only or --name-status has been given, do not munge pathnames and
use NULs as output field terminators.
Without this option, pathnames with "unusual" characters are quoted as explained for the
configuration variable core.quotePath (see git-config(1)).
--name-only
Show only the name of each changed file in the post-image tree. The file names are often encoded
in UTF-8. For more information see the discussion about encoding in the git-log(1) manual page.
--name-status
Show only the name(s) and status of each changed file. See the description of the --diff-filter
option on what the status letters mean. Just like --name-only the file names are often encoded in
UTF-8.
--submodule[=]
Specify how differences in submodules are shown. When specifying --submodule=short the short
format is used. This format just shows the names of the commits at the beginning and end of the
range. When --submodule or --submodule=log is specified, the log format is used. This format
lists the commits in the range like git-submodule(1) summary does. When --submodule=diff is
specified, the diff format is used. This format shows an inline diff of the changes in the
submodule contents between the commit range. Defaults to diff.submodule or the short format if
the config option is unset.
--color[=]
Show colored diff. --color (i.e. without =) is the same as --color=always. can be
one of always, never, or auto.
--no-color
Turn off colored diff. It is the same as --color=never.
--color-moved[=]
Moved lines of code are colored differently. The defaults to no if the option is not given
and to zebra if the option with no mode is given. The mode must be one of:
no
Moved lines are not highlighted.
default
Is a synonym for zebra. This may change to a more sensible mode in the future.
plain
Any line that is added in one location and was removed in another location will be colored
with color.diff.newMoved. Similarly color.diff.oldMoved will be used for removed lines that
are added somewhere else in the diff. This mode picks up any moved line, but it is not very
useful in a review to determine if a block of code was moved without permutation.
blocks
Blocks of moved text of at least 20 alphanumeric characters are detected greedily. The
detected blocks are painted using either the color.diff.(old|new)Moved color. Adjacent blocks
cannot be told apart.
zebra
Blocks of moved text are detected as in blocks mode. The blocks are painted using either the
color.diff.(old|new)Moved color or color.diff.(old|new)MovedAlternative. The change between
the two colors indicates that a new block was detected.
dimmed-zebra
Similar to zebra, but additional dimming of uninteresting parts of moved code is performed.
The bordering lines of two adjacent blocks are considered interesting, the rest is
uninteresting. dimmed_zebra is a deprecated synonym.
--no-color-moved
Turn off move detection. This can be used to override configuration settings. It is the same as
--color-moved=no.
--color-moved-ws=,...
This configures how whitespace is ignored when performing the move detection for --color-moved.
These modes can be given as a comma separated list:
no
Do not ignore whitespace when performing move detection.
ignore-space-at-eol
Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
ignore-space-change
Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace at line end, and considers
all other sequences of one or more whitespace characters to be equivalent.
ignore-all-space
Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences even if one line has
whitespace where the other line has none.
allow-indentation-change
Initially ignore any whitespace in the move detection, then group the moved code blocks only
into a block if the change in whitespace is the same per line. This is incompatible with the
other modes.
--no-color-moved-ws
Do not ignore whitespace when performing move detection. This can be used to override
configuration settings. It is the same as --color-moved-ws=no.
--word-diff[=]
By default, words are delimited by whitespace; see --word-diff-regex below. The defaults
to plain, and must be one of:
color
Highlight changed words using only colors. Implies --color.
plain
Show words as [-removed-] and {added}. Makes no attempts to escape the delimiters if they
appear in the input, so the output may be ambiguous.
porcelain
Use a special line-based format intended for script consumption. Added/removed/unchanged runs
are printed in the usual unified diff format, starting with a +/-/` ` character at the
beginning of the line and extending to the end of the line. Newlines in the input are
represented by a tilde ~ on a line of its own.
none
Disable word diff again.
Note that despite the name of the first mode, color is used to highlight the changed parts in all
modes if enabled.
--word-diff-regex=
Use to decide what a word is, instead of considering runs of non-whitespace to be a word.
Also implies --word-diff unless it was already enabled.
Every non-overlapping match of the is considered a word. Anything between these matches
is considered whitespace and ignored(!) for the purposes of finding differences. You may want to
append |[^[:space:]] to your regular expression to make sure that it matches all non-whitespace
characters. A match that contains a newline is silently truncated(!) at the newline.
For example, --word-diff-regex=. will treat each character as a word and, correspondingly, show
differences character by character.
The regex can also be set via a diff driver or configuration option, see gitattributes(5) or git-
config(1). Giving it explicitly overrides any diff driver or configuration setting. Diff drivers
override configuration settings.
--color-words[=]
Equivalent to --word-diff=color plus (if a regex was specified) --word-diff-regex=.
--no-renames
Turn off rename detection, even when the configuration file gives the default to do so.
--rename-empty, --no-rename-empty
Whether to use empty blobs as rename source.
--check
Warn if changes introduce conflict markers or whitespace errors. What are considered whitespace
errors is controlled by core.whitespace configuration. By default, trailing whitespaces
(including lines that consist solely of whitespaces) and a space character that is immediately
followed by a tab character inside the initial indent of the line are considered whitespace
errors. Exits with non-zero status if problems are found. Not compatible with --exit-code.
--ws-error-highlight=
Highlight whitespace errors in the context, old or new lines of the diff. Multiple values are
separated by comma, none resets previous values, default reset the list to new and all is a
shorthand for old,new,context. When this option is not given, and the configuration variable
diff.wsErrorHighlight is not set, only whitespace errors in new lines are highlighted. The
whitespace errors are colored with color.diff.whitespace.
--full-index
Instead of the first handful of characters, show the full pre- and post-image blob object names
on the "index" line when generating patch format output.
--binary
In addition to --full-index, output a binary diff that can be applied with git-apply. Implies
--patch.
--abbrev[=]
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal object name in diff-raw format output and
diff-tree header lines, show the shortest prefix that is at least hexdigits long that
uniquely refers the object. In diff-patch output format, --full-index takes higher precedence,
i.e. if --full-index is specified, full blob names will be shown regardless of --abbrev. Non
default number of digits can be specified with --abbrev=.
-B[][/], --break-rewrites[=[][/]]
Break complete rewrite changes into pairs of delete and create. This serves two purposes:
It affects the way a change that amounts to a total rewrite of a file not as a series of deletion
and insertion mixed together with a very few lines that happen to match textually as the context,
but as a single deletion of everything old followed by a single insertion of everything new, and
the number controls this aspect of the -B option (defaults to 60%). -B/70% specifies that
less than 30% of the original should remain in the result for Git to consider it a total rewrite
(i.e. otherwise the resulting patch will be a series of deletion and insertion mixed together
with context lines).
When used with -M, a totally-rewritten file is also considered as the source of a rename (usually
-M only considers a file that disappeared as the source of a rename), and the number controls
this aspect of the -B option (defaults to 50%). -B20% specifies that a change with addition and
deletion compared to 20% or more of the file’s size are eligible for being picked up as a
possible source of a rename to another file.
-M[], --find-renames[=]
Detect renames. If is specified, it is a threshold on the similarity index (i.e. amount of
addition/deletions compared to the file’s size). For example, -M90% means Git should consider a
delete/add pair to be a rename if more than 90% of the file hasn’t changed. Without a % sign, the
number is to be read as a fraction, with a decimal point before it. I.e., -M5 becomes 0.5, and is
thus the same as -M50%. Similarly, -M05 is the same as -M5%. To limit detection to exact renames,
use -M100%. The default similarity index is 50%.
-C[], --find-copies[=]
Detect copies as well as renames. See also --find-copies-harder. If is specified, it has the
same meaning as for -M.
--find-copies-harder
For performance reasons, by default, -C option finds copies only if the original file of the copy
was modified in the same changeset. This flag makes the command inspect unmodified files as
candidates for the source of copy. This is a very expensive operation for large projects, so use
it with caution. Giving more than one -C option has the same effect.
-D, --irreversible-delete
Omit the preimage for deletes, i.e. print only the header but not the diff between the preimage
and /dev/null. The resulting patch is not meant to be applied with patch or git apply; this is
solely for people who want to just concentrate on reviewing the text after the change. In
addition, the output obviously lacks enough information to apply such a patch in reverse, even
manually, hence the name of the option.
When used together with -B, omit also the preimage in the deletion part of a delete/create pair.
-l
The -M and -C options involve some preliminary steps that can detect subsets of renames/copies
cheaply, followed by an exhaustive fallback portion that compares all remaining unpaired
destinations to all relevant sources. (For renames, only remaining unpaired sources are relevant;
for copies, all original sources are relevant.) For N sources and destinations, this exhaustive
check is O(N^2). This option prevents the exhaustive portion of rename/copy detection from
running if the number of source/destination files involved exceeds the specified number. Defaults
to diff.renameLimit. Note that a value of 0 is treated as unlimited.
--diff-filter=[(A|C|D|M|R|T|U|X|B)...[*]]
Select only files that are Added (A), Copied (C), Deleted (D), Modified (M), Renamed (R), have
their type (i.e. regular file, symlink, submodule, ...) changed (T), are Unmerged (U), are
Unknown (X), or have had their pairing Broken (B). Any combination of the filter characters
(including none) can be used. When * (All-or-none) is added to the combination, all paths are
selected if there is any file that matches other criteria in the comparison; if there is no file
that matches other criteria, nothing is selected.
Also, these upper-case letters can be downcased to exclude. E.g. --diff-filter=ad excludes added
and deleted paths.
Note that not all diffs can feature all types. For instance, copied and renamed entries cannot
appear if detection for those types is disabled.
-S
Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of the specified (i.e.
addition/deletion) in a file. Intended for the scripter’s use.
It is useful when you’re looking for an exact block of code (like a struct), and want to know the
history of that block since it first came into being: use the feature iteratively to feed the
interesting block in the preimage back into -S, and keep going until you get the very first
version of the block.
Binary files are searched as well.
-G
Look for differences whose patch text contains added/removed lines that match .
To illustrate the difference between -S --pickaxe-regex and -G, consider a commit
with the following diff in the same file:
+ return frotz(nitfol, two->ptr, 1, 0);
...
- hit = frotz(nitfol, mf2.ptr, 1, 0);
While git log -G"frotz\(nitfol" will show this commit, git log -S"frotz\(nitfol" --pickaxe-regex
will not (because the number of occurrences of that string did not change).
Unless --text is supplied patches of binary files without a textconv filter will be ignored.
See the pickaxe entry in gitdiffcore(7) for more information.
--find-object=
Look for differences that change the number of occurrences of the specified object. Similar to
-S, just the argument is different in that it doesn’t search for a specific string but for a
specific object id.
The object can be a blob or a submodule commit. It implies the -t option in git-log to also find
trees.
--pickaxe-all
When -S or -G finds a change, show all the changes in that changeset, not just the files that
contain the change in .
--pickaxe-regex
Treat the given to -S as an extended POSIX regular expression to match.
-O
Control the order in which files appear in the output. This overrides the diff.orderFile
configuration variable (see git-config(1)). To cancel diff.orderFile, use -O/dev/null.
The output order is determined by the order of glob patterns in . All files with
pathnames that match the first pattern are output first, all files with pathnames that match the
second pattern (but not the first) are output next, and so on. All files with pathnames that do
not match any pattern are output last, as if there was an implicit match-all pattern at the end
of the file. If multiple pathnames have the same rank (they match the same pattern but no earlier
patterns), their output order relative to each other is the normal order.
is parsed as follows:
• Blank lines are ignored, so they can be used as separators for readability.
• Lines starting with a hash ("#") are ignored, so they can be used for comments. Add a
backslash ("\") to the beginning of the pattern if it starts with a hash.
• Each other line contains a single pattern.
Patterns have the same syntax and semantics as patterns used for fnmatch(3) without the
FNM_PATHNAME flag, except a pathname also matches a pattern if removing any number of the final
pathname components matches the pattern. For example, the pattern "foo*bar" matches "fooasdfbar"
and "foo/bar/baz/asdf" but not "foobarx".
--skip-to=, --rotate-to=
Discard the files before the named from the output (i.e. skip to), or move them to the
end of the output (i.e. rotate to). These options were invented primarily for the use of the git
difftool command, and may not be very useful otherwise.
-R
Swap two inputs; that is, show differences from index or on-disk file to tree contents.
--relative[=], --no-relative
When run from a subdirectory of the project, it can be told to exclude changes outside the
directory and show pathnames relative to it with this option. When you are not in a subdirectory
(e.g. in a bare repository), you can name which subdirectory to make the output relative to by
giving a as an argument. --no-relative can be used to countermand both diff.relative
config option and previous --relative.
-a, --text
Treat all files as text.
--ignore-cr-at-eol
Ignore carriage-return at the end of line when doing a comparison.
--ignore-space-at-eol
Ignore changes in whitespace at EOL.
-b, --ignore-space-change
Ignore changes in amount of whitespace. This ignores whitespace at line end, and considers all
other sequences of one or more whitespace characters to be equivalent.
-w, --ignore-all-space
Ignore whitespace when comparing lines. This ignores differences even if one line has whitespace
where the other line has none.
--ignore-blank-lines
Ignore changes whose lines are all blank.
-I, --ignore-matching-lines=
Ignore changes whose all lines match . This option may be specified more than once.
--inter-hunk-context=
Show the context between diff hunks, up to the specified of lines, thereby fusing hunks
that are close to each other. Defaults to diff.interHunkContext or 0 if the config option is
unset.
-W, --function-context
Show whole function as context lines for each change. 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)).
--exit-code
Make the program exit with codes similar to diff(1). That is, it exits with 1 if there were
differences and 0 means no differences.
--quiet
Disable all output of the program. Implies --exit-code. Disables execution of external diff
helpers whose exit code is not trusted, i.e. their respective configuration option
diff.trustExitCode or diff..trustExitCode or environment variable
GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF_TRUST_EXIT_CODE is false.
--ext-diff
Allow an external diff helper to be executed. If you set an external diff driver with
gitattributes(5), you need to use this option with git-log(1) and friends.
--no-ext-diff
Disallow external diff drivers.
--textconv, --no-textconv
Allow (or disallow) external text conversion filters to be run when comparing binary files. See
gitattributes(5) for details. Because textconv filters are typically a one-way conversion, the
resulting diff is suitable for human consumption, but cannot be applied. For this reason,
textconv filters are enabled by default only for git-diff(1) and git-log(1), but not for git-
format-patch(1) or diff plumbing commands.
--ignore-submodules[=(none|untracked|dirty|all)]
Ignore changes to submodules in the diff generation. all is the default. Using none will
consider the submodule modified when it either contains untracked or modified files or its HEAD
differs from the commit recorded in the superproject and can be used to override any settings of
the ignore option in git-config(1) or gitmodules(5). When untracked is used submodules are not
considered dirty when they only contain untracked content (but they are still scanned for
modified content). Using dirty ignores all changes to the work tree of submodules, only changes
to the commits stored in the superproject are shown (this was the behavior until 1.7.0). Using
all hides all changes to submodules.
--src-prefix=
Show the given source instead of "a/".
--dst-prefix=
Show the given destination instead of "b/".
--no-prefix
Do not show any source or destination prefix.
--default-prefix
Use the default source and destination prefixes ("a/" and "b/"). This overrides configuration
variables such as diff.noprefix, diff.srcPrefix, diff.dstPrefix, and diff.mnemonicPrefix (see
git-config(1)).
--line-prefix=
Prepend an additional to every line of output.
--ita-invisible-in-index
By default entries added by git add -N appear as an existing empty file in git diff and a new
file in git diff --cached. This option makes the entry appear as a new file in git diff and
non-existent in git diff --cached. This option could be reverted with --ita-visible-in-index.
Both options are experimental and could be removed in future.
--max-depth=
For each pathspec given on command line, descend at most levels of directories. A value
of -1 means no limit. Cannot be combined with wildcards in the pathspec. Given a tree containing
foo/bar/baz, the following list shows the matches generated by each set of options:
• --max-depth=0 -- foo: foo
• --max-depth=1 -- foo: foo/bar
• --max-depth=1 -- foo/bar: foo/bar/baz
• --max-depth=1 -- foo foo/bar: foo/bar/baz
• --max-depth=2 -- foo: foo/bar/baz
If no pathspec is given, the depth is measured as if all top-level entries were specified. Note
that this is different than measuring from the root, in that --max-depth=0 would still return
foo. This allows you to still limit depth while asking for a subset of the top-level entries.
Note that this option is only supported for diffs between tree objects, not against the index or
working tree.
For more detailed explanation on these common options, see also gitdiffcore(7).
The id of a tree object.
...
If provided, the results are limited to a subset of files matching one of the provided pathspecs.
-r
Recurse into sub-trees.
-t
Show tree entry itself as well as subtrees. Implies -r.
--root
When --root is specified the initial commit will be shown as a big creation event. This is
equivalent to a diff against the NULL tree.
--merge-base
Instead of comparing the s directly, use the merge base between the two s as
the "before" side. There must be two s given and they must both be commits.
--stdin
When --stdin is specified, the command does not take arguments from the command line.
Instead, it reads lines containing either two , one , or a list of from
its standard input. (Use a single space as separator.)
When two trees are given, it compares the first tree with the second. When a single commit is
given, it compares the commit with its parents. The remaining commits, when given, are used as if
they are parents of the first commit.
When comparing two trees, the ID of both trees (separated by a space and terminated by a newline)
is printed before the difference. When comparing commits, the ID of the first (or only) commit,
followed by a newline, is printed.
The following flags further affect the behavior when comparing commits (but not trees).
-m
By default, git diff-tree --stdin does not show differences for merge commits. With this flag, it
shows differences to that commit from all of its parents. See also -c.
-s
By default, git diff-tree --stdin shows differences, either in machine-readable form (without -p)
or in patch form (with -p). This output can be suppressed. It is only useful with the -v flag.
-v
This flag causes git diff-tree --stdin to also show the commit message before the differences.
--pretty[=], --format=
Pretty-print the contents of the commit logs in a given format, where can be one of
oneline, short, medium, full, fuller, reference, email, raw, format: and
tformat:. When is none of the above, and has % in it, it acts as if
--pretty=tformat: were given.
See the "PRETTY FORMATS" section for some additional details for each format. When = part
is omitted, it defaults to medium.
Note
you can specify the default pretty format in the repository configuration (see git-
config(1)).
--abbrev-commit
Instead of showing the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name, show a prefix that names the
object uniquely. --abbrev= (which also modifies diff output, if it is displayed) option can
be used to specify the minimum length of the prefix.
This should make --pretty=oneline a whole lot more readable for people using 80-column terminals.
--no-abbrev-commit
Show the full 40-byte hexadecimal commit object name. This negates --abbrev-commit, either
explicit or implied by other options such as --oneline. It also overrides the log.abbrevCommit
variable.
--oneline
This is a shorthand for --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit used together.
--encoding=
Commit objects record the character encoding used for the log message in their encoding header;
this option can be used to tell the command to re-code the commit log message in the encoding
preferred by the user. For non plumbing commands this defaults to UTF-8. Note that if an object
claims to be encoded in X and we are outputting in X, we will output the object verbatim; this
means that invalid sequences in the original commit may be copied to the output. Likewise, if
iconv(3) fails to convert the commit, we will quietly output the original object verbatim.
--expand-tabs=, --expand-tabs, --no-expand-tabs
Perform a tab expansion (replace each tab with enough spaces to fill to the next display column
that is a multiple of ) in the log message before showing it in the output. --expand-tabs is
a short-hand for --expand-tabs=8, and --no-expand-tabs is a short-hand for --expand-tabs=0, which
disables tab expansion.
By default, tabs are expanded in pretty formats that indent the log message by 4 spaces (i.e.
medium, which is the default, full, and fuller).
--notes[=]
Show the notes (see git-notes(1)) that annotate the commit, when showing the commit log message.
This is the default for git log, git show and git whatchanged commands when there is no --pretty,
--format, or --oneline option given on the command line.
By default, the notes shown are from the notes refs listed in the core.notesRef and
notes.displayRef variables (or corresponding environment overrides). See git-config(1) for more
details.
With an optional argument, use the ref to find the notes to display. The ref can specify
the full refname when it begins with refs/notes/; when it begins with notes/, refs/ and otherwise
refs/notes/ is prefixed to form the full name of the ref.
Multiple --notes options can be combined to control which notes are being displayed. Examples:
"--notes=foo" will show only notes from refs/notes/foo; "--notes=foo --notes" will show both
notes from "refs/notes/foo" and from the default notes ref(s).
--no-notes
Do not show notes. This negates the above --notes option, by resetting the list of notes refs
from which notes are shown. Options are parsed in the order given on the command line, so e.g.
"--notes --notes=foo --no-notes --notes=bar" will only show notes from refs/notes/bar.
--show-notes-by-default
Show the default notes unless options for displaying specific notes are given.
--show-notes[=], --standard-notes, --no-standard-notes
These options are deprecated. Use the above --notes/--no-notes options instead.
--show-signature
Check the validity of a signed commit object by passing the signature to gpg --verify and show
the output.
--no-commit-id
git diff-tree outputs a line with the commit ID when applicable. This flag suppresses the commit
ID output.
-c
This flag changes the way a merge commit is displayed (which means it is useful only when the
command is given one , or --stdin). It shows the differences from each of the parents
to the merge result simultaneously instead of showing pairwise diff between a parent and the
result one at a time (which is what the -m option does). Furthermore, it lists only files which
were modified from all parents.
--cc
This flag changes the way a merge commit patch is displayed, in a similar way to the -c option.
It implies the -c and -p options and further compresses the patch output by omitting
uninteresting hunks whose contents in the parents have only two variants and the merge result
picks one of them without modification. When all hunks are uninteresting, the commit itself and
the commit log message are not shown, just like in any other "empty diff" case.
--combined-all-paths
This flag causes combined diffs (used for merge commits) to list the name of the file from all
parents. It thus only has effect when -c or --cc are specified, and is likely only useful if
filename changes are detected (i.e. when either rename or copy detection have been requested).
--always
Show the commit itself and the commit log message even if the diff itself is empty.
PRETTY FORMATS
If the commit is a merge, and if the pretty-format is not oneline, email or raw, an additional line
is inserted before the Author: line. This line begins with "Merge: " and the hashes of ancestral
commits are printed, separated by spaces. Note that the listed commits may not necessarily be the
list of the direct parent commits if you have limited your view of history: for example, if you are
only interested in changes related to a certain directory or file.
There are several built-in formats, and you can define additional formats by setting a pretty.
config option to either another format name, or a format: string, as described below (see git-
config(1)). Here are the details of the built-in formats:
• oneline
This is designed to be as compact as possible.
• short
commit
Author:
• medium
commit
Author:
Date:
• full
commit
Author:
Commit:
• fuller
commit
Author:
AuthorDate:
Commit:
CommitDate:
• reference
(, )
This format is used to refer to another commit in a commit message and is the same as
--pretty='format:%C(auto)%h (%s, %ad)'. By default, the date is formatted with --date=short
unless another --date option is explicitly specified. As with any format: with format
placeholders, its output is not affected by other options like --decorate and --walk-reflogs.
• email
From
From:
Date:
Subject: [PATCH]
• mboxrd
Like email, but lines in the commit message starting with "From " (preceded by zero or more ">")
are quoted with ">" so they aren’t confused as starting a new commit.
• raw
The raw format shows the entire commit exactly as stored in the commit object. Notably, the
hashes are displayed in full, regardless of whether --abbrev or --no-abbrev are used, and parents
information show the true parent commits, without taking grafts or history simplification into
account. Note that this format affects the way commits are displayed, but not the way the diff is
shown e.g. with git log --raw. To get full object names in a raw diff format, use --no-abbrev.
• format:
The format: format allows you to specify which information you want to show. It
works a little bit like printf format, with the notable exception that you get a newline with %n
instead of \n.
E.g, format:"The author of %h was %an, %ar%nThe title was >>%s<<%n" would show something like
this:
The author of fe6e0ee was Junio C Hamano, 23 hours ago
The title was >>t4119: test autocomputing -p for traditional diff input.<<
The placeholders are:
• Placeholders that expand to a single literal character:
%n
newline
%%
a raw %
%x00
%x followed by two hexadecimal digits is replaced with a byte with the hexadecimal
digits' value (we will call this "literal formatting code" in the rest of this document).
• Placeholders that affect formatting of later placeholders:
%Cred
switch color to red
%Cgreen
switch color to green
%Cblue
switch color to blue
%Creset
reset color
%C()
color specification, as described under Values in the "CONFIGURATION FILE" section of
git-config(1). By default, colors are shown only when enabled for log output (by
color.diff, color.ui, or --color, and respecting the auto settings of the former if we
are going to a terminal). %C(auto,) is accepted as a historical synonym for the
default (e.g., %C(auto,red)). Specifying %C(always,) will show the colors even when
color is not otherwise enabled (though consider just using --color=always to enable color
for the whole output, including this format and anything else git might color). auto
alone (i.e. %C(auto)) will turn on auto coloring on the next placeholders until the
color is switched again.
%m
left (<), right (>) or boundary (-) mark
%w([[,[,]]])
switch line wrapping, like the -w option of git-shortlog(1).
%<([,(trunc|ltrunc|mtrunc)])
make the next placeholder take at least N column widths, padding spaces on the right if
necessary. Optionally truncate (with ellipsis ..) at the left (ltrunc) ..ft, the middle
(mtrunc) mi..le, or the end (trunc) rig.., if the output is longer than columns. Note
1: that truncating only works correctly with >= 2. Note 2: spaces around the and
(see below) values are optional. Note 3: Emojis and other wide characters will take
two display columns, which may over-run column boundaries. Note 4: decomposed character
combining marks may be misplaced at padding boundaries.
%<|( )
make the next placeholder take at least until th display column, padding spaces on
the right if necessary. Use negative values for column positions measured from the
right hand edge of the terminal window.
%>(), %>|()
similar to %<(), %<|() respectively, but padding spaces on the left
%>>(), %>>|()
similar to %>(), %>|() respectively, except that if the next placeholder takes more
spaces than given and there are spaces on its left, use those spaces
%><(), %><|()
similar to %<(), %<|() respectively, but padding both sides (i.e. the text is
centered)
• Placeholders that expand to information extracted from the commit:
%H
commit hash
%h
abbreviated commit hash
%T
tree hash
%t
abbreviated tree hash
%P
parent hashes
%p
abbreviated parent hashes
%an
author name
%aN
author name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%ae
author email
%aE
author email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%al
author email local-part (the part before the @ sign)
%aL
author local-part (see %al) respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%ad
author date (format respects --date= option)
%aD
author date, RFC2822 style
%ar
author date, relative
%at
author date, UNIX timestamp
%ai
author date, ISO 8601-like format
%aI
author date, strict ISO 8601 format
%as
author date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)
%ah
author date, human style (like the --date=human option of git-rev-list(1))
%cn
committer name
%cN
committer name (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%ce
committer email
%cE
committer email (respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%cl
committer email local-part (the part before the @ sign)
%cL
committer local-part (see %cl) respecting .mailmap, see git-shortlog(1) or git-blame(1))
%cd
committer date (format respects --date= option)
%cD
committer date, RFC2822 style
%cr
committer date, relative
%ct
committer date, UNIX timestamp
%ci
committer date, ISO 8601-like format
%cI
committer date, strict ISO 8601 format
%cs
committer date, short format (YYYY-MM-DD)
%ch
committer date, human style (like the --date=human option of git-rev-list(1))
%d
ref names, like the --decorate option of git-log(1)
%D
ref names without the " (", ")" wrapping.
%(decorate[: