Git log

Goal

Use log command to inspect commits and commit history.

Use git log to display the contents of each commit
Limit the previous command to two commits
Display statistics per file for every commit
Show only commit message and hash for every commit
Use custom format to display hash, author name, author date relative and subject
Display commits from the last two weeks without merge commits
Display commit hash and subject from commits made since 2019-10-01 and before 2019-10-03, by author Jane Doe, without merge commits
Search for usage of dump function
Display graph

Useful options for git log --pretty=format

Option	Description of Output
%H	Commit hash
%h	Abbreviated commit hash
%T	Tree hash
%t	Abbreviated tree hash
%P	Parent hashes
%p	Abbreviated parent hashes
%an	Author name
%ae	Author email
%ad	Author date (format respects the --date=option)
%ar	Author date, relative
%cn	Committer name
%ce	Committer email
%cd	Committer date
%cr	Committer date, relative
%s	Subject

Common options to git log

Option	Description
-p	Show the patch introduced with each commit
--stat	Show statistics for files modified in each commit
--shortstat	Display only the changed/insertions/deletions line from the --stat command
--name-only	Show the list of files modified after the commit information
--name-status	Show the list of files affected with added/modified/deleted information as well
--abbrev-commit	Show only the first few characters of the SHA-1 checksum instead of all 40
--relative-date	Display the date in a relative format (for example, “2 weeks ago”) instead of using the full date format
--graph	Display an ASCII graph of the branch and merge history beside the log output
--pretty	Show commits in an alternate format. Options include oneline, short, full, fuller, and format (where you specify your own format)
--oneline	Shorthand for --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit used together

Options to limit the output of git log

Option	Description
-	Show only the last n commits
--since, --after	Limit the commits to those made after the specified date
--until, --before	Limit the commits to those made before the specified date
--author	Only show commits in which the author entry matches the specified string
--committer	Only show commits in which the committer entry matches the specified string
--grep	Only show commits with a commit message containing the string
-S	Only show commits adding or removing code matching the string

git log -p
git log -p -2
git log --stat
git log --pretty=oneline
git log --pretty=format:"%h - %an, %ar : %s"
git log --since=2.weeks --no-merges
git log --pretty="%h - %s" --author='Jane Doe' --since="2019-10-01" --before="2019-10-03" --no-merges
git log --pretty="%h - %s" -S dump
git log --pretty=format:'%h %s' --graph