Git log to get commits only for a specific branch

Question

I want to list all commits that are only part of a specific branch   With the following  it lists all the commits from the branch  but also from the parent  master   git log mybranch   The other option I found  was to exclude the commits reachable by master and gives me what I want  BUT I would like to avoid the need of knowing the other branches names   git log mybranch --not master   I was trying to use git for-each-ref  but it is also listing mybranch so actually it is excluding all   git log mybranch --not   git for-each-ref --format     refname short   refs heads     Update   I m testing a new option that I found a while ago  and till now seems that this could be what I was looking for   git log --walk-reflogs mybranch   Update  2013-02-13T15 08    The --walk-reflogs option is good  but I checked that there is an expiration for reflogs  default 90 days  gc reflogExpire    I think I found the answer I was looking for   git log mybranch --not   git for-each-ref --format    refname   refs heads    grep -v  refs heads mybranch     I m just removing the current branch from list of branches available and using that list to be excluded from the log  This way I only get the commits that are only reached by mybranch

User · Answer

I m using the following commands   git shortlog --no-merges --graph --abbrev-commit master   lt mybranch gt    or  git log --no-merges --graph --oneline --decorate master   lt mybranch gt

User · Answer

Here I present an alias based on Richard Hansen s answer  and Ben C s suggestion   but that I adapted to exclude tags  The alias should be fairly robust    For Git 1 22  git config --global alias only   b   1 -  git branch --show-current    git log --oneline --graph  quot heads  b quot  --not --exclude  quot  b quot  --branches --remotes      For older Git  git config --global alias only   b   1 -  git symbolic-ref -q --short HEAD    b   b  heads    git log --oneline --graph  quot heads  b quot  --not --exclude  quot  b quot  --branches --remotes     Example of use  git only mybranch    Show commits that are in mybranch ONLY git only             Show commits that are ONLY in current branch  Note that ONLY means commits that would be LOST  after garbage collection  if the given branch was deleted  excluding the effect of tags   The alias should work even if there is unfortunately a tag named mybranch  thanks to prefix heads    Note also that no commits are shown if they are part of any remote branch  including upstream if any   in compliance with the definition of ONLY  The alias shows the one-line history as a graph of the selected commits    a --- b --- c --- master                                  d                          e --- f --- g --- mybranch  HEAD                   h --- origin other  With example above  git only would show       mybranch HEAD      g            d     f   In order to include tags  but still excluding HEAD   the alias becomes  adapt as above for older Git   git config --global alias only   b   1 -  git branch --show-current     git log --oneline --graph --all --not --exclude  quot refs heads  b quot  --exclude HEAD --all     Or the variant that includes all the tags including HEAD  and removing current branch as default since it won t output anything   git config --global alias only   git log --oneline --graph --all --not --exclude   quot refs heads  1  quot  --all     This last version is the only one that really satisfies the criteria commits-that-are-lost-if-given-branch-is-deleted  since a branch cannot be deleted if it is checked out  and no commit pointed by HEAD or any other tag will be lost  However the first two variants are more useful  Finally  the alias does not work with remote branches  eg  git only origin master   The alias must be modified  for instance  git config --global alias remote-only   git log --oneline --graph  quot  1 quot  --not --exclude  quot  1 quot  --remotes --branches

User · Answer

This will output the commits on the current branch  If any argument is passed  it just outputs the hashes  git show all commits only on this branch    bin bash function show help       ME   basename  0    IT   cat  lt  lt EOF      usage   ME  NEWER BRANCH   OLDER BRANCH   VERBOSE       Compares 2 different branches  and lists the commits found only    in the first branch  newest branch       e g         ME         - gt  default  compares current branch to master    ME B1      - gt  compares branch B1 to master    ME B1 B2   - gt  compares branch B1 to B2    ME B1 B2 V - gt  compares branch B1 to B2  and displays commit messages          echo  quot  IT quot    exit    if    quot  1 quot      quot help quot    then   show help fi    Show commit msgs if any arg passed for arg 3 if    quot  3 quot    then   OPT  quot -v quot  fi    get branch names OLDER BRANCH   2 - quot master quot   if   -z  quot  1 quot    then   NEWER BRANCH   git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD  else   NEWER BRANCH  1 fi  if    quot  NEWER BRANCH quot      quot  OLDER BRANCH quot    then   echo  quot   Please supply 2 different branches to compare  quot    show help fi  OUT    git cherry  OPT  OLDER BRANCH  NEWER BRANCH   if   -z  quot  OUT quot    then   echo  quot No differences found  The branches  NEWER BRANCH and  OLDER BRANCH are in sync  quot    exit  fi  if    quot  OPT quot      quot -v quot    then   echo  quot  OUT quot  else   echo  quot  OUT quot    awk   print  2   fi

User · Answer

I found this approach relatively easy    Checkout to the branch and than   Run  git rev-list --simplify-by-decoration -2 HEAD    This will provide just two SHAs   1  last commit of the branch  C1    2  and commit parent to the first commit of the branch  C2    Now run  git log --decorate --pretty oneline --reverse --name-status  lt C2 gt    lt C1 gt     Here C1 and C2 are two strings you will get when you run first command  Put these values without  lt   in second command   This will give list of history of file changing within the branch

User · Answer

In my situation  we are using Git Flow and GitHub  All you need to do this is  Compare your feature branch with your develop branch on GitHub   It will show the commits only made to your feature branch   For example   https   github com your repo compare develop   feature branch name

User · Answer

You could try something like this      bin bash  all but         target    git rev-parse  1       echo   target --not      git for-each-ref --shell --format  ref   refname   refs heads         while read entry     do         eval   entry           test   ref       target   amp  amp  echo   ref      done    git log   all but  1    Or  borrowing from the recipe in the Git User s Manual      bin bash git log  1 --not    git show-ref --heads   cut -d    -f2   grep -v    1

User · Answer

I finally found the way to do what the OP wanted  It s as simple as   git log --graph  branchname    The command will display all commits that are reachable from the provided branch in the format of graph  But  you can easily filter all commits on that branch by looking at the commits graph whose   is the first character in the commit line   For example  let s look at the excerpt of git log --graph master on cakephp GitHub repo below    D  Web Folder cakephp gt git log --graph master     commit 8314c2ff833280bbc7102cb6d4fcf62240cd3ac4     Merge  c3f45e8 0459a35     Author  Jos   Lorenzo Rodr  guez  lt lorenzo users noreply github com gt      Date    Tue Aug 30 08 01 59 2016  0200             Merge pull request  9367 from cakephp fewer-allocations             Do fewer allocations for simple default values          commit 0459a35689fec80bd8dca41e31d244a126d9e15e     Author  Mark Story  lt mark mark-story com gt      Date    Mon Aug 29 22 21 16 2016 -0400             The action should only be defaulted when there are no patterns             Only default the action name when there is no default  amp  no pattern         defined          commit 80c123b9dbd1c1b3301ec1270adc6c07824aeb5c     Author  Mark Story  lt mark mark-story com gt      Date    Sun Aug 28 22 35 20 2016 -0400             Do fewer allocations for simple default values              Don t allocate arrays when we are only assigning a single array key         value            commit c3f45e811e4b49fe27624b57c3eb8f4721a4323b       Merge  10e5734 43178fd       Author  Mark Story  lt mark mark-story com gt        Date    Mon Aug 29 22 15 30 2016 -0400               Merge pull request  9322 from cakephp add-email-assertions               Add email assertions trait         commit 43178fd55d7ef9a42706279fa275bb783063cf34     Author  Jad Bitar  lt jadbitar mac com gt      Date    Mon Aug 29 17 43 29 2016 -0400             Fix   since  in new files docblocks       As you can see  only commits 8314c2ff833280bbc7102cb6d4fcf62240cd3ac4 and c3f45e811e4b49fe27624b57c3eb8f4721a4323b have the   being the first character in the commit lines  Those commits are from the master branch while the other four are from some other branches

User · Answer

I needed to export log in one line for a specific branch  So I probably came out with a simpler solution  When doing git log --pretty oneline --graph we can see that all commit not done in the current branch are lines starting with   So a simple grep -v do the job  git log --pretty oneline --graph   grep -v  quot    quot  Of course you can change the pretty parameter if you need other info  as soon as you keep it in one line  You probably want to remove merge commit too  As the message start with  quot Merge branch quot   pipe another grep -v and you re done  In my specific ase  the final command was  git log --pretty  quot  ad    an   s quot  --graph   grep -v  quot    quot    grep -v  quot Merge branch quot

User · Answer

The following shell command should do what you want     git log --all --not   git rev-list --no-walk --exclude refs heads mybranch --all    Caveats  If you have mybranch checked out  the above command won t work   That s because the commits on mybranch are also reachable by HEAD  so Git doesn t consider the commits to be unique to mybranch   To get it to work when mybranch is checked out  you must also add an exclude for HEAD   git log --all --not   git rev-list --no-walk       --exclude refs heads mybranch       --exclude HEAD       --all    However  you should not exclude HEAD unless the mybranch is checked out  otherwise you risk showing commits that are not exclusive to mybranch   Similarly  if you have a remote branch named origin mybranch that corresponds to the local mybranch branch  you ll have to exclude it   git log --all --not   git rev-list --no-walk       --exclude refs heads mybranch       --exclude refs remotes origin mybranch       --all    And if the remote branch is the default branch for the remote repository  usually only true for origin master   you ll have to exclude origin HEAD as well   git log --all --not   git rev-list --no-walk       --exclude refs heads mybranch       --exclude refs remotes origin mybranch       --exclude refs remotes origin HEAD       --all    If you have the branch checked out  and there s a remote branch  and the remote branch is the default for the remote repository  then you end up excluding a lot   git log --all --not   git rev-list --no-walk       --exclude refs heads mybranch       --exclude HEAD     --exclude refs remotes origin mybranch       --exclude refs remotes origin HEAD       --all    Explanation  The git rev-list command is a low-level  plumbing  command that walks the given revisions and dumps the SHA1 identifiers encountered   Think of it as equivalent to git log except it only shows the SHA1   no log message  no author name  no timestamp  none of that  fancy  stuff   The --no-walk option  as the name implies  prevents git rev-list from walking the ancestry chain   So if you type git rev-list --no-walk mybranch it will only print one SHA1 identifier   the identifier of the tip commit of the mybranch branch   The --exclude refs heads mybranch --all arguments tell git rev-list to start from each reference except for refs heads mybranch   So  when you run git rev-list --no-walk --exclude refs heads mybranch --all  Git prints the SHA1 identifier of the tip commit of each ref except for refs heads mybranch   These commits and their ancestors are the commits you are not interested in   these are the commits you do not want to see   The other commits are the ones you want to see  so we collect the output of git rev-list --no-walk --exclude refs heads mybranch --all and tell Git to show everything but those commits and their ancestors   The --no-walk argument is necessary for large repositories  and is an optimization for small repositories    Without it  Git would have to print  and the shell would have to collect  and store in memory  many more commit identifiers than necessary   With a large repository  the number of collected commits could easily exceed the shell s command-line argument limit   Git bug   I would have expected the following to work   git log --all --not --exclude refs heads mybranch --all   but it does not   I m guessing this is a bug in Git  but maybe it s intentional

User · Answer

git rev-list --exclude master --branches --no-walk   will list the tips of every branch that isn t master   git rev-list master --not   git rev-list --exclude master --branches --no-walk    will list every commit in master s history that s not in any other branch s history   Sequencing is important for the options that set up the filter pipeline for commit selection  so --branches has to follow any exclusion patterns it s supposed to apply  and --no-walk has to follow the filters supplying commits rev-list isn t supposed to walk

User · Answer

BUT I would like to avoid the need of knowing the other branches names    I don t think this is possible  a branch in Git is always based on another one or at least on another commit  as explained in  git diff doesn t show enough      You need a reference point for your log to show the right commits   As mentioned in  GIT - Where did I branch from        branches are simply pointers to certain commits in a DAG   So even if git log master  mybranch is one answer  it would still show too many commits  if mybranch is based on myotherbranch  itself based on master   In order to find that reference  the origin of your branch   you can only parse commits and see in which branch they are  as seen in     Git  Finding what branch a commit came from    How can I see what branch another branch was forked from

User · Answer

Fast answer   git log   git merge-base master b2   HEAD   Let s say    That you have a master branch Do a few commits You created a branch named b2 Do git log -n1  the commit Id is the merge base between b2 and master Do a few commits in b2 git log will show your log history of b2 and master Use commit range  if you aren t familiar with the concept  I invite you to google it or stack overflow-it   For your actual context  you can do for example  git log commitID FOO  comitID BAR   The      is the range operator for the log command   That mean  in a simple form  give me all logs more recent than commitID FOO    Look at point  4  the merge base  So  git log COMMITID mergeBASE  HEAD will show you the difference Git can retrieve the merge base for you like this  git merge-base b2 master  Finally you can do   git log   git merge-base master b2   HEAD

User · Answer

From what it sounds like you should be using cherry   git cherry -v develop mybranch   This would show all of the commits which are contained within mybranch  but NOT in develop  If you leave off the last option  mybranch   it will compare the current branch instead   As VonC pointed out  you are ALWAYS comparing your branch to another branch  so know your branches and then choose which one to compare to

[git] Git log to get commits only for a specific branch

Examples related to git