git-shortlog - Summarize 'git log' output
git shortlog [<options>] [<revision-range>] [[--] <path>...] git log --pretty=short | git shortlog [<options>]
GIT-SHORTLOG(1) Git Manual GIT-SHORTLOG(1)
NAME
git-shortlog - Summarize 'git log' output
SYNOPSIS
git shortlog [<options>] [<revision-range>] [[--] <path>...]
git log --pretty=short | git shortlog [<options>]
DESCRIPTION
Summarizes git log output in a format suitable for inclusion in release
announcements. Each commit will be grouped by author and title.
Additionally, "[PATCH]" will be stripped from the commit description.
If no revisions are passed on the command line and either standard
input is not a terminal or there is no current branch, git shortlog
will output a summary of the log read from standard input, without
reference to the current repository.
OPTIONS
-n, --numbered
Sort output according to the number of commits per author instead
of author alphabetic order.
-s, --summary
Suppress commit description and provide a commit count summary
only.
-e, --email
Show the email address of each author.
--format[=<format>]
Instead of the commit subject, use some other information to
describe each commit. <format> can be any string accepted by the
--format option of git log, such as * [%h] %s. (See the "PRETTY
FORMATS" section of git-log(1).)
Each pretty-printed commit will be rewrapped before it is shown.
--group=<type>
Group commits based on <type>. If no --group option is specified,
the default is author. <type> is one of:
o author, commits are grouped by author
o committer, commits are grouped by committer (the same as -c)
o trailer:<field>, the <field> is interpreted as a
case-insensitive commit message trailer (see git-interpret-
trailers(1)). For example, if your project uses Reviewed-by
trailers, you might want to see who has been reviewing with git
shortlog -ns --group=trailer:reviewed-by.
Note that commits that do not include the trailer will not be
counted. Likewise, commits with multiple trailers (e.g.,
multiple signoffs) may be counted more than once (but only once
per unique trailer value in that commit).
Shortlog will attempt to parse each trailer value as a name
<email> identity. If successful, the mailmap is applied and the
email is omitted unless the --email option is specified. If the
value cannot be parsed as an identity, it will be taken
literally and completely.
If --group is specified multiple times, commits are counted under
each value (but again, only once per unique value in that commit).
For example, git shortlog --group=author
--group=trailer:co-authored-by counts both authors and co-authors.
-c, --committer
This is an alias for --group=committer.
-w[<width>[,<indent1>[,<indent2>]]]
Linewrap the output by wrapping each line at width. The first line
of each entry is indented by indent1 spaces, and the second and
subsequent lines are indented by indent2 spaces. width, indent1,
and indent2 default to 76, 6 and 9 respectively.
If width is 0 (zero) then indent the lines of the output without
wrapping them.
<revision-range>
Show only commits in the specified revision range. When no
<revision-range> is specified, it defaults to HEAD (i.e. the whole
history leading to the current commit). origin..HEAD specifies all
the commits reachable from the current commit (i.e. HEAD), but not
from origin. For a complete list of ways to spell <revision-range>,
see the "Specifying Ranges" section of gitrevisions(7).
[--] <path>...
Consider only commits that are enough to explain how the files that
match the specified paths came to be.
Paths may need to be prefixed with -- to separate them from options
or the revision range, when confusion arises.
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.
--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).
When --notes is in effect, the message from the notes is matched as
if it were part of the log message.
--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
When finding commits to include, 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.
--exclude-first-parent-only
When finding commits to exclude (with a ^), follow only the first
parent commit upon seeing a merge commit. This can be used to find
the set of changes in a topic branch from the point where it
diverged from the remote branch, given that arbitrary merges can be
valid topic branch changes.
--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>.
--alternate-refs
Pretend as if all objects mentioned as ref tips of alternate
repositories were listed on the command line. An alternate
repository is any repository whose object directory is specified in
objects/info/alternates. The set of included objects may be
modified by core.alternateRefsCommand, etc. See git-config(1).
--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.
--bisect
Pretend as if the bad bisection ref refs/bisect/bad was listed and
as if it was followed by --not and the good bisection refs
refs/bisect/good-* on the command line.
--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.
--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 and reference (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).
Under --pretty=reference, this information will not be shown at
all.
--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 -.
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)
--show-pulls
Include all commits from the default mode, but also any merge
commits that are not TREESAME to the first parent but are TREESAME
to a later parent. This mode is helpful for showing the merge
commits that "first introduced" a change to a branch.
--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:
o 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.
o In A, foo contains just "foo".
o B contains the same change as A. Its merge M is trivial and hence
TREESAME to all parents.
o C does not change foo, but its merge N changes it to "foobar", so
it is not TREESAME to any parent.
o 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.
o E changes quux to "xyzzy", and its merge P combines the strings to
"quux xyzzy". P is TREESAME to O, but not to E.
o 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.
In addition to the above settings, you can change whether TREESAME
affects inclusion:
--dense
Commits that are walked are included if they are not TREESAME to
any parent.
--sparse
All commits that are walked are included.
Note that without --full-history, this still simplifies merges: if
one of the parents is TREESAME, we follow only that one, so the
other sides of the merge are never walked.
--simplify-merges
First, build a history graph in the same way that --full-history
with parent rewriting does (see above).
Then simplify each commit C to its replacement C' in the final
history according to the following rules:
o Set C' to C.
o Replace each parent P of C' with its simplification P'. In the
process, drop parents that are ancestors of other parents or
that are root commits TREESAME to an empty tree, and remove
duplicates, but take care to never drop all parents that we are
TREESAME to.
o If after this parent rewriting, C' is a root or merge commit
(has zero or >1 parents), a boundary commit, or !TREESAME, it
remains. Otherwise, it is replaced with its only parent.
The effect of this is best shown by way of comparing to
--full-history with parent rewriting. The example turns into:
.-A---M---N---O
/ / /
I B D
\ / /
`---------'
Note the major differences in N, P, and Q over --full-history:
o N's parent list had I removed, because it is an ancestor of the
other parent M. Still, N remained because it is !TREESAME.
o P's parent list similarly had I removed. P was then removed
completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME.
o Q's parent list had Y simplified to X. X was then removed,
because it was a TREESAME root. Q was then removed completely,
because it had one parent and is TREESAME.
There is another simplification mode available:
--ancestry-path
Limit the displayed commits to those directly on the ancestry chain
between the "from" and "to" commits in the given commit range. I.e.
only display commits that are ancestor of the "to" commit and
descendants of the "from" commit.
As an example use case, consider the following commit history:
D---E-------F
/ \ \
B---C---G---H---I---J
/ \
A-------K---------------L--M
A regular D..M computes the set of commits that are ancestors of M,
but excludes the ones that are ancestors of D. This is useful to
see what happened to the history leading to M since D, in the sense
that "what does M have that did not exist in D". The result in this
example would be all the commits, except A and B (and D itself, of
course).
When we want to find out what commits in M are contaminated with
the bug introduced by D and need fixing, however, we might want to
view only the subset of D..M that are actually descendants of D,
i.e. excluding C and K. This is exactly what the --ancestry-path
option does. Applied to the D..M range, it results in:
E-------F
\ \
G---H---I---J
\
L--M
Before discussing another option, --show-pulls, we need to create a new
example history.
A common problem users face when looking at simplified history is that
a commit they know changed a file somehow does not appear in the file's
simplified history. Let's demonstrate a new example and show how
options such as --full-history and --simplify-merges works in that
case:
.-A---M-----C--N---O---P
/ / \ \ \/ / /
I B \ R-'`-Z' /
\ / \/ /
\ / /\ /
`---X--' `---Y--'
For this example, suppose I created file.txt which was modified by A,
B, and X in different ways. The single-parent commits C, Z, and Y do
not change file.txt. The merge commit M was created by resolving the
merge conflict to include both changes from A and B and hence is not
TREESAME to either. The merge commit R, however, was created by
ignoring the contents of file.txt at M and taking only the contents of
file.txt at X. Hence, R is TREESAME to X but not M. Finally, the
natural merge resolution to create N is to take the contents of
file.txt at R, so N is TREESAME to R but not C. The merge commits O and
P are TREESAME to their first parents, but not to their second parents,
Z and Y respectively.
When using the default mode, N and R both have a TREESAME parent, so
those edges are walked and the others are ignored. The resulting
history graph is:
I---X
When using --full-history, Git walks every edge. This will discover the
commits A and B and the merge M, but also will reveal the merge commits
O and P. With parent rewriting, the resulting graph is:
.-A---M--------N---O---P
/ / \ \ \/ / /
I B \ R-'`--' /
\ / \/ /
\ / /\ /
`---X--' `------'
Here, the merge commits O and P contribute extra noise, as they did not
actually contribute a change to file.txt. They only merged a topic that
was based on an older version of file.txt. This is a common issue in
repositories using a workflow where many contributors work in parallel
and merge their topic branches along a single trunk: manu unrelated
merges appear in the --full-history results.
When using the --simplify-merges option, the commits O and P disappear
from the results. This is because the rewritten second parents of O and
P are reachable from their first parents. Those edges are removed and
then the commits look like single-parent commits that are TREESAME to
their parent. This also happens to the commit N, resulting in a history
view as follows:
.-A---M--.
/ / \
I B R
\ / /
\ / /
`---X--'
In this view, we see all of the important single-parent changes from A,
B, and X. We also see the carefully-resolved merge M and the
not-so-carefully-resolved merge R. This is usually enough information
to determine why the commits A and B "disappeared" from history in the
default view. However, there are a few issues with this approach.
The first issue is performance. Unlike any previous option, the
--simplify-merges option requires walking the entire commit history
before returning a single result. This can make the option difficult to
use for very large repositories.
The second issue is one of auditing. When many contributors are working
on the same repository, it is important which merge commits introduced
a change into an important branch. The problematic merge R above is not
likely to be the merge commit that was used to merge into an important
branch. Instead, the merge N was used to merge R and X into the
important branch. This commit may have information about why the change
X came to override the changes from A and B in its commit message.
--show-pulls
In addition to the commits shown in the default history, show each
merge commit that is not TREESAME to its first parent but is
TREESAME to a later parent.
When a merge commit is included by --show-pulls, the merge is
treated as if it "pulled" the change from another branch. When
using --show-pulls on this example (and no other options) the
resulting graph is:
I---X---R---N
Here, the merge commits R and N are included because they pulled
the commits X and R into the base branch, respectively. These
merges are the reason the commits A and B do not appear in the
default history.
When --show-pulls is paired with --simplify-merges, the graph
includes all of the necessary information:
.-A---M--. N
/ / \ /
I B R
\ / /
\ / /
`---X--'
Notice that since M is reachable from R, the edge from N to M was
simplified away. However, N still appears in the history as an
important commit because it "pulled" the change R into the main
branch.
The --simplify-by-decoration option allows you to view only the big
picture of the topology of the history, by omitting commits that are
not referenced by tags. Commits are marked as !TREESAME (in other
words, kept after history simplification rules described above) if (1)
they are referenced by tags, or (2) they change the contents of the
paths given on the command line. All other commits are marked as
TREESAME (subject to be simplified away).
MAPPING AUTHORS
See gitmailmap(5).
Note that if git shortlog is run outside of a repository (to process
log contents on standard input), it will look for a .mailmap file in
the current directory.
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
Git 2.36.0 04/17/2022 GIT-SHORTLOG(1)