Retrieve the commit log for a specific line in a file

Question

Is there any way to get git to give you a commit log for just commits that touched a particular line in a file   Like git blame  but git blame will show you the LAST commit that touched a particular line    I d really like to get a similar log of  not the list of commits to anywhere in the file  but just the commits that touched a particular line

User · Answer

Try using below command implemented in Git 1.8.4.

git log -u -L <upperLimit>,<lowerLimit>:<path_to_filename>

So, in your case upperLimit & lowerLimit is the touched line_number

More info - https://www.techpurohit.com/list-some-useful-git-commands

User · Answer

See also Git  discover which commits ever touched a range of lines     Since Git 1 8 4  git log has -L to view the evolution of a range of lines   For example  suppose you look at git blame s output  Here -L 150  11 means  only look at the lines 150 to 150 11      git blame -L 150  11 -- git-web--browse sh a180055a git-web--browse sh  Giuseppe Bilotta 2010-12-03 17 47 36  0100 150             die  The browser  browser is not a180055a git-web--browse sh  Giuseppe Bilotta 2010-12-03 17 47 36  0100 151     fi 5d6491c7 git-browse-help sh  Christian Couder 2007-12-02 06 07 55  0100 152  fi 5d6491c7 git-browse-help sh  Christian Couder 2007-12-02 06 07 55  0100 153   5d6491c7 git-browse-help sh  Christian Couder 2007-12-02 06 07 55  0100 154  case   browser  in 81f42f11 git-web--browse sh  Giuseppe Bilotta 2010-12-03 17 47 38  0100 155  firefox iceweasel seamonkey iceape  5d6491c7 git-browse-help sh  Christian Couder 2007-12-02 06 07 55  0100 156       Check version because firefox  lt  2 0 do 5d6491c7 git-browse-help sh  Christian Couder 2007-12-02 06 07 55  0100 157     vers   expr     browser path -version    5d6491c7 git-browse-help sh  Christian Couder 2007-12-02 06 07 55  0100 158     NEWTAB  -new-tab  5d6491c7 git-browse-help sh  Christian Couder 2007-12-02 06 07 55  0100 159     test   vers  -lt 2  amp  amp  NEWTAB    a0685a4f git-web--browse sh  Dmitry Potapov   2008-02-09 23 22 22 -0800 160       browser path   NEWTAB       amp    And you want to know the history of what is now line 155   Then  use git log  Here  -L 155 155 git-web--browse sh means  trace the evolution of lines 155 to 155 in the file named git-web--browse sh      git log --pretty short -u -L 155 155 git-web--browse sh commit 81f42f11496b9117273939c98d270af273c8a463 Author  Giuseppe Bilotta  lt giuseppe bilotta gmail com gt       web--browse  support opera  seamonkey and elinks  diff --git a git-web--browse sh b git-web--browse sh --- a git-web--browse sh     b git-web--browse sh    -143 1  143 1    -firefox iceweasel   firefox iceweasel seamonkey iceape   commit a180055a47c6793eaaba6289f623cff32644215b Author  Giuseppe Bilotta  lt giuseppe bilotta gmail com gt       web--browse  coding style  diff --git a git-web--browse sh b git-web--browse sh --- a git-web--browse sh     b git-web--browse sh    -142 1  142 1    -    firefox iceweasel   firefox iceweasel   commit 5884f1fe96b33d9666a78e660042b1e3e5f9f4d9 Author  Christian Couder  lt chriscool tuxfamily org gt       Rename  git-help--browse sh  to  git-web--browse sh    diff --git a git-web--browse sh b git-web--browse sh ---  dev null     b git-web--browse sh    -0 0  127 1         firefox iceweasel

User · Answer

If the position of the line  line number  stays the same through the history of the file  this will show you the contents of the line at each commit  git log --follow --pretty format  quot  h quot  --  path to file    while read -r hash  do echo  hash  amp  amp  git show  hash  path to file    head -n 544   tail -n1  done  Change 544 to the line number and path to file to the file path

User · Answer

You can mix git blame and git log commands to retrieve the summary of each commit in the git blame command and append them  Something like the following bash   awk script  It appends the commit summary as code comment inline   git blame FILE NAME   awk -F            commit   substr  0  0  8      if   a commit          query    git log --oneline -n 1   commit   --         query   getline a commit            print  0         substr a commit   9         In one line   git blame FILE NAME   awk -F       commit   substr  0  0  8   if   a commit     query    git log --oneline -n 1   commit   --    query   getline a commit      print  0         substr a commit   9

User · Answer

An extremely easy way to do this is by using vim-fugitive  Just open the file in vim  select the line s  you re interested in using V  then enter   Glog   Now you can use  cnext and  cprev to see all the revisions of the file where that line is modified  At any point  enter  Gblame to see the sha  author  and date info

User · Answer

Here is a solution that defines a git alias  so you will be able use it like that    git rblame -M -n -L   REGEX   1  FILE   Output example    00000000 18  Not Committed Yet 2013-08-19 13 04 52  0000 728  fooREGEXbar 15227b97 18  User1 2013-07-11 18 51 26  0000 728  fooREGEX 1748695d 23  User2 2013-03-19 21 09 09  0000 741  REGEXbar   You can define the alias in your  gitconfig or simply run the following command  git config alias rblame  sh -c  while line   git blame       commit 2 gt  dev null   do commit   line 0 8      00000000      commit    amp  amp  commit   git rev-parse HEAD   echo  line  done  dumb param   This is an ugly one-liner  so here is a de-obfuscated equivalent bash function    git-rblame          local commit line     while line   git blame       commit 2 gt  dev null   do         commit    line 0 8            if    00000000        commit     then             commit   git rev-parse HEAD          fi         echo  line     done     The pickaxe solution   git log --pickaxe-regex -S REGEX    will only give you line additions deletions  not the other alterations of the line containing the regular expression   A limitation of this solution is that git blame only returns the 1st REGEX match  so if multiple matches exist the recursion may  jump  to follow another line  Be sure to check the full history output to spot those  jumps  and then fix your REGEX to ignore the parasite lines   Finally  here is an alternate version that run git show on each commit to get the full diff    git config alias rblameshow  sh -c  while line   git blame       commit 2 gt  dev null   do commit   line 0 8      00000000      commit    amp  amp  commit   git rev-parse HEAD   git show  commit  done  dumb param

User · Answer

You can get a set of commits by using pick-axe   git log -S the line from your file  -- path to your file txt   This will give you all of the commits that affected that text in that file  If the file was renamed at some point  you can add --follow-parent   If you would like to inspect the commits at each of these edits  you can pipe that result to git show   git log       xargs -n 1 git show

User · Answer

Simplifying  matt s answer -  git blame -L14 15 --  lt file path gt   Here you will get a blame for a lines 14 to 15   Since -L option expects Range as a param we can t get a Blame for a single line using the -L option    Reference

User · Answer

I don t believe there s anything built-in for this  It s made tricky by the fact that it s rare for a single line to change several times without the rest of the file changing substantially too  so you ll tend to end up with the line numbers changing a lot   If you re lucky enough that the line always has some identifying characteristic  e g  an assignment to a variable whose name never changed  you could use the regex choice for git blame -L  For example   git blame -L   variable name         1   But this only finds the first match for that regex  so if you don t have a good way of matching the line  it s not too helpful   You could hack something up  I suppose  I don t have time to write out code just now  but    something along these lines  Run git blame -n -L  n  n  file  The first field is the previous commit touched  and the second field is the line number in that commit  since it could ve changed  Grab those  and run git blame -n  n  n  commit   file  i e  the same thing starting from the commit before the last time the file was changed    Note that this will fail you if the last commit that changed the line was a merge commit  The primary way this could happen if the line was changed as part of a merge conflict resolution    Edit  I happened across this mailing list post from March 2011 today  which mentions that tig and git gui have a feature that will help you do this  It looks like the feature has been considered  but not finished  for git itself

User · Answer

This will call git blame for every meaningful revision to show line  LINE of file  FILE    git log --format format  H  FILE   xargs -L 1 git blame  FILE -L  LINE  LINE   As usual  the blame shows the revision number in the beginning of each line  You can append    sort   uniq -c   to get aggregated results  something like a list of commits that changed this line   Not quite  if code only has been moved around  this might show the same commit ID twice for different contents of the line  For a more detailed analysis you d have to do a lagged comparison of the git blame results for adjacent commits  Anyone

User · Answer

In my case the line number had changed a lot over time  I was also on git 1 8 3 which does not support regex in  git blame -L    RHEL7 still has 1 8 3   myfile haproxy cfg git rev-list HEAD --  myfile   while read i do     git diff -U0   i    i  myfile   sed  s    i    done   grep   lt sometext gt     Oneliner   myfile  lt myfile gt    git rev-list HEAD --  myfile   while read i  do     git diff -U0   i    i  myfile   sed  s    i     done   grep   lt sometext gt     This can of course be made into a script or a function

[git] Retrieve the commit log for a specific line in a file?

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