View the change history of a file using Git versioning

Question

How do I view the history of an individual file with complete details of what has changed?

git log -- [filename] shows me the commit history of a file, but how do I see the file content that changed?

Sanskritic

The link above (posted by Chris) is no longer valid. This link is working today: git-scm.com/book/en/v2 – Fealty

@chris: What is the link you speak of? In some now-deleted comment? – Corenecoreopsis

Answer 1

For a graphical view, use gitk:

gitk [filename]

To follow the file across file renames:

gitk --follow [filename]

Cauchy

But I rather even have a tool that combined the above with 'git blame' allowing me to browse the source of a file as it changes in time... – Phelips

GitWeb is the answer to that. – Respirator

Unfortunately, this doesn't follow the history of the file past renames. – Sobriquet

I was also looking for the history of files that were previously renamed and found this thread first. The solution is to use "git log --follow <filename>" as Phil pointed out here. – Stewardess

The author was looking for a command line tool. While gitk comes with GIT, it's neither a command line app nor a particularly good GUI. – Snuggery

Nice tip. In my machine (git v1.7.10) I had to use gitk -- [filename]. – Mccowyn

Was he looking for a command line tool? "right click -> show history" certainly doesn't imply it. – Delsiedelsman

Caution Windows users... The filename path is case sensitive – Canuck

@DanMoulding: gitk --follow [filename] shows the history of the file past renames. It doesn't show the file content's changes before the renaming, though. See this answer. – Sherasherar

if this file is deleted, and you want to find who delete it, shoud use git log -- [filename] – Indemnification

not looking for anything else other than git, this should not be the accepted answer – Assumpsit

gitk is not part of the basic git package. You need to download the tk package to use gitk. @VolkA's answer is better, git log -p filename works without any dependencies. – Hara

The question was "View the change history of a file using Git versioning". This is exactly what gitk does. It looks up the git commit history for changes. I don't care if it is part of the basic git package as long as it does the job in a fast and simple way. – Aam

@HenriquedeSousa: Because the asker felt that this answer was the most helpful to him. – Boutte

gitk works like a charm. it helped me checking the history of a single file, exactly what I needed. – Randallrandan

Is there any way to do this using gitGUI? – Kerril

downvote due to the use of another tool, better use the standard cli from the answer https://mcmap.net/q/12244/-view-the-change-history-of-a-file-using-git-versioning – Fullgrown

The accepted answer should take into account not everyone has gitk installed on their system. If I was in a CLI-only environment there would be no GUI available. OP asked to use the "git" command. Using gitweb, gitk, or whatever is the same as saying "just go to GitHub and check history there". – Troll

This answer shouldn't be the accepted one imo. I personally use Gitx, not Gitk, but I wouldn't want a Gitx-specific answer either. The git log -p answer below is much more applicable to a majority of users. – Desrochers

independent of what the accepted answer should be, +1 for facilitating gitk mind blown action – Inflexion

What's gitk ? – Eveevection

@JimAho git visualization tool – Stifle

why that answer marks as right if it suggests using a third-party utility? the right answer stays below ( @DanMoulding is author) – Stifle

If you come, as I do, from a Windows background and are unsure what gitk is, you'll find it as part of Git for Windows. Launch from the git-bash.exe application (a Linux command-line emulator). Git for Windows, git bash and gitk are awesome... – Heterogynous

This is the best answer – Fu

I get "bad arguments to gitk invalid object name 'c'" – Friulian

Answer 2

This lets Git generate the patches for each log entry:

git log -p -- filename

See git help log for more options — it can actually do a lot of nice things. :)

---

To get just the diff for a specific commit, use

git show HEAD

or specify any other revision by identifier.

---

To browse the changes visually:

gitk

Jermyn

git show HEAD shows all files, do you know how to track an individual file (as Richard was asking for)? – Respirator

you use: git show <revision> -- filename, that will show the diffs for that revision, in case exists one. – Orvilleorwell

--stat is also helpful. You can use it together with -p. – Rosabelle

This is great. gitk does not behave well when specifying paths that do not exist anymore. I used git log -p -- path . – Amative

Plus gitk looks like it was built by the boogie monster. This is a great answer and is best tailored to the original question. – Kelsiekelso

adding --follow will also consider file renames. – Rolan

There's a better answer on this question which uses the --follow flag – Odisodium

I love @ghayes' answer :p And +1 for this answer; I feel a good terminal can show the diff far more clearly than the visual tool. – Wesleywesleyan

git log --follow -p file_path should be accepted answer – Hennery

-p = Generate patch = show diff except commit description – Rosina

Here's an extension to this answer, which I just wrote, to browse the changes in meld, another graphical tool, using git difftool. – Bateau

Answer 3

git log --follow -p -- path-to-file

This will show the entire history of the file (including history beyond renames and with diffs for each change).

In other words, if the file named bar was once named foo, then git log -p bar (without the --follow option) will only show the file's history up to the point where it was renamed -- it won't show the file's history when it was known as foo. Using git log --follow -p bar will show the file's entire history, including any changes to the file when it was known as foo. The -p option ensures that diffs are included for each change.

Sobriquet

I find it a bit weird but you cannot use -CC flag with log --follow file or it will find nothing (git 1.7.0.4). – Phelgon

--stat is also helpful. You can use it together with -p. – Rosabelle

I agree this is the REAL answer. (1.) --follow ensures that you see file renames (2.) -p ensures that you see how the file gets changed (3.) it is command line only. – Mislead

Add a -- before your file, and this would be absolutely the best answer! – Lowther

Wow. It works for me. https://mcmap.net/q/12244/-view-the-change-history-of-a-file-using-git-versioning and https://mcmap.net/q/12244/-view-the-change-history-of-a-file-using-git-versioning is not. I dont know why.. I'm using ubuntu and GIT version 2.0.2 – Decontaminate

"fatal: ambiguous argument 'my_file_name': unknown revision or path not in the working tree." – Cystitis

@Lowther I notice that the -- was added, but I don't know why this makes it best? What is it that it does? – Capitally

@Capitally The -- option tells Git that it has reached the end of the options and that anything that follows -- should be treated as an argument. For git log this only makes any difference if you have a path name that begins with a dash. Say you wanted to know the history of a file that has the unfortunate name "--follow": git log --follow -p -- --follow – Sobriquet

@Benjohn: Normally, the -- is useful because it can also guard against any revision names that match the filename you've entered, which can actually be scary. For example: If you had both a branch and a file named foo, git log -p foo would show the git log history up to foo, not the history for the file foo. But @DanMoulding is right that since the --follow command only takes a single filename as its argument, this is less necessary since it can't be a revision. I just learned that. Maybe you were right to leave it out of your answer then; I'm not sure. – Lowther

It's crazy how far down the long page of documentation for git log one has to read before the section "Generating patches with -p". This answer does a great job explaining --follow it would be useful to explain -p too. – Octarchy

actually @JohnLawrenceAspden brought up a good point (in his answer) to also include --all to see the file history in all branches. might be useful in some cases. – Filigree

Be careful not to type the filename wrongly (I forgot an "s" at the end of my filename) You will see a message in the git log, skipping... followed by series of tildes ~ (presumably one for each commit/ I dunno). – Burgwell

Throwing error. fatal: unrecognized argument: --folow. But the command git log -p <file/to/the/path> worked. – Floria

I get: fatal: --follow requires exactly one pathspec – Friulian

Answer 4

tig is a terminal-based viewer with color support similar to the GUI-based gitk.

Quick Install:

• APT: apt-get install tig
• Homebrew (OS X): $ brew install tig

Use it to view history on a single file: tig [filename]

Or browse the detailed repository history via: tig

Bickart

Excellent text-based tool, great answer. I freaked out when I saw the dependencies for gitk installing on my headless server. Would upvote again A+++ – Hydropic

You can look at specific files with tig too, i.e. tig -- path/to/specific/file – Mcwherter

To show all changes for a file, including renames, use tig --follow filename. Thank you so much @falken for helping us discover such a wonderful TUI tool. – Atwood

Answer 5

git whatchanged -p filename is also equivalent to git log -p filename in this case.

You can also see when a specific line of code inside a file was changed with git blame filename. This will print out a short commit id, the author, timestamp, and complete line of code for every line in the file. This is very useful after you've found a bug and you want to know when it was introduced (or whose fault it was).

Shortlived

"New users are encouraged to use git-log instead. (...) The command is kept primarily for historical reasons;" – Erich

Answer 6

Sourcetree users

If you use Sourcetree to visualize your repository (it's free and quite good) you can right click a file and select Log Selected

The display (below) is much friendlier than gitk and most the other options listed. Unfortunately (at this time) there is no easy way to launch this view from the command line — Sourcetree's CLI currently just opens repositories.

Culvert

I particularly like the option "Follow renamed files", which allows you to see if a file was renamed or moved. – Exanimate

but unless i'm mistaken (please let me know!), one can only compare two versions at a time in the gui? Are there any clients which have an elegant interface for diffing several different versions at once? Possibly with a zoom-out view like in Sublime Text? That would be really useful I think. – Rennarennane

@SamLewallen If I understand correctly you want to compare three different commits? This sounds similar to a three-way merge (mine, yours, base) — usually this strategy is used for resolving merge conflicts not necessarily comparing three arbitrary commits. There are many tools that support three way merges stackoverflow.com/questions/10998728/… but the trick is feeding these tools the specific revisions gitready.com/intermediate/2009/02/27/… – Culvert

You save my life. You can use gitk to find the SHA1 hash, and then open SourceTree to enter Log Selected.. based on the found SHA1. – Gulfweed

It's perfect. I searched the same solution on ATLASSIAN Community community.atlassian.com/t5/Sourcetree-questions/… – Kirin

@Gulfweed What do you need the SHA for if you already have the file name? (Anyway, if you do need the SHA, you can find it with SourceTree too.) – Antevert

@MarnenLaibow-Koser I cannot remember why I need the SHA at that time. Ahaha. – Gulfweed

This is the best answer. – Friulian

Answer 7

To show what revision and author last modified each line of a file:

git blame filename

or if you want to use the powerful blame GUI:

git gui blame filename

Patrick

The blame commands do not show information about deleted code. Looking at each commit through gitk or tig shows that. – Shook

Answer 8

Summary of other answers after reading through them and playing a bit:

The usual command line command would be

git log --follow --all -p dir/file.c

But you can also use either gitk (GUI) or tig (text UI) to give much more human-readable ways of looking at it.

gitk --follow --all -p dir/file.c

tig --follow --all -p dir/file.c

Under Debian/Ubuntu, the install command for these lovely tools is as expected:

sudo apt-get install gitk tig

And I'm currently using:

alias gdf='gitk --follow --all -p'

so that I can just type gdf dir to get a focussed history of everything in subdirectory dir.

Marya

I think this is a great answer. Maybe you arent getting voted as well because you answer other ways (IMHO better) to see the changes i.e. via gitk and tig in addition to git. – Kuebbing

Just to add to answer. Locate the path (in git space, up to which exists in repository still). Then use the command stated above "git log --follow --all -p <folder_path/file_path>". There may be the case, that the filde/folder would have been removed over the history, hence locate the maximum path that exists still, and try to fetch its history. works ! – Pantomime

--all is for all branches, the rest is explained in @Dan's answer – Filigree

Oh man, after so long time looking for good solution to track file beyond renames, finally, I found it here. Works like charm! Thanks! – Inconsiderate

@Filigree Oh awesome, I was looking for all branches – Lux

Answer 9

You can use Visual Studio Code with GitLens. It's a very powerful tool.

After having installed GitLens, go to GitLens tab, select FILE HISTORY and you can browse it.

Rifling

or donjayamanne.githistory – Stationary

Answer 10

Add this alias to your .gitconfig:

[alias]
    lg = log --all --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset'\n--abbrev-commit --date=relative

And use the command like this:

> git lg
> git lg -- filename

The output will look almost exactly the same as the gitk output. Enjoy.

Blowgun

After I ran that lg shortcut, I said (and I quote) "Beautiful!". However, note that the "\n" after "--graph" is an error. – Aquilar

Also can be used git lg -p filename - it returns a beautiful diff of searched file. – Whereupon

Answer 11

Lately I discovered tig and found it very useful. There are some cases I'd wish it does A or B but most of the time it's rather neat.

For your case, tig <filename> might be what you're looking for.

https://jonas.github.io/tig/

Decarbonate

Answer 12

You can also try this which lists the commits that has changed a specific part of a file (implemented in Git 1.8.4).

The result returned would be the list of commits that modified this particular part. Command:

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

where upperLimit is the start line number and lowerLimit is the ending line number of the file.

More details are at http://techpurohit.in/list-some-useful-git-commands.

Kirimia

The link is broken - the domain techpurohit.comno longer exists. – Corenecoreopsis

@PeterMortensen Hi, the link has been replaced with the archived one. – Cowry

Answer 13

In the Sourcetree UI, you can find the history of a file by selecting the 'Log Selected' option in the right click context menu:

It would show the history of all the commits.

Microelement

Where does this GUI come from? – Ferri

Sourcetree UI. Thanks – Microelement

what is a windows? – Neoplatonism

@Emobe: What do you mean? Can you elaborate? (The screenshot does appear to be from Microsoft Windows.) – Corenecoreopsis

Answer 14

I wrote git-playback for this exact purpose

pip install git-playback
git playback [filename]

This has the benefit of both displaying the results in the command line (like git log -p) while also letting you step through each commit using the arrow keys (like gitk).

Minimum

Answer 15

Or:

gitx -- <path/to/filename>

if you're using gitx

Misdate

For some reason my gitx opens up blank. – Diplomate

@Diplomate you have to make sure you're at the root of your git repository – Dower

Answer 16

If you want to see the whole history of a file, including on all other branches use:

gitk --all <filename>

Forgather

Answer 17

If you're using the Git GUI (on Windows):

Under the Repository menu, you can use Visualize master's History.

Highlight a commit in the top pane and a file in the lower right and you'll see the diff for that commit in the lower left.

Prehistory

How does this answer the question? – Aquilar

Well, OP didn't specify command line, and moving from SourceSafe (which is a GUI) it seemed relevant to point out that you could do pretty much the same thing that you can do in VSS in the Git GUI on Windows. – Prehistory

Answer 18

With the excellent Git Extensions, you go to a point in the history where the file still existed (if it have been deleted, otherwise just go to HEAD), switch to the File tree tab, right-click on the file and choose File history.

By default, it follows the file through the renames, and the Blame tab allows to see the name at a given revision.

It has some minor gotchas, like showing fatal: Not a valid object name in the View tab when clicking on the deletion revision, but I can live with that. :-)

Multitude

Worth noting that this is Windows-only. – Margit

@EvanHahn not accurate, via mono one can use GitExtension also on Linux, we use it on ubuntu and quite happy w/ it. see git-extensions-documentation.readthedocs.org/en/latest/… – Reverberate

Answer 19

To get all commits for a specific file use this command:

git rev-list HEAD --oneline FileName

For example

git rev-list HEAD --oneline index.html

Output

7a2bb2f update_index_with_alias
6c03e56 update_changes
e867142 Revert "add_paragraph"

If you want to view the changes that make on the file

git log -p fileName

See gif image

Instill

Answer 20

The answer I was looking for wasn't here. It was to see changes in files that I'd staged for commit. I.e.,

git diff --cached

Heres

If you want to include local (unstaged) changes, I often run git diff origin/master to show the complete differences between your local branch and the master branch (which can be updated from remote via git fetch) – Kelsiekelso

And to limit this to a particular file, you can use git diff --cached path/to/file.xml – Dacoity

Answer 21

SmartGit:

1. In the menu enable to display unchanged files: View / Show unchanged files
2. Right click the file and select 'Log' or press 'Ctrl-L'

Merrie

Answer 22

Here's my preference: view the change history visually in meld, one commit at a time, going backwards in time, starting at commit commit:

# Option 1: for all files and folders
git difft commit

# Option 2: just for the specified files and folders
git difft commit -- path/to/file.c path/to/folder/

I wrote git difft. Installation instructions are below.

How to manually view the change history of a file graphically in meld

If you want to just see which commits changed a file, so you can do git difftool on them to graphically see the changes with meld (as I explain here), do this instead:

git log --follow --oneline -- path/to/file.c

Sample run and output:

eRCaGuy_hello_world$ git log --follow --oneline -- c/alsa_aplay__play_tone_sound_WIP.c
04b67fb (HEAD -> master) Update c/alsa_aplay__play_tone_sound_WIP.c
301122a wip: alsa_aplay__play_tone_sound.c: finish initial version of program
d4e8092 wip: add c/alsa_aplay__play_tone_sound.c

Now I can just look at the last changes graphically in meld like this (pulling the commit hashes from the output above).

Note that I intentionally leave off the filename so that it can properly track the file automatically for me since the file was renamed, and I know these commits likely only edited this file anyway:

# just the last change
git difftool 04b67fb~..04b67fb

# and the one before that
git difftool 301122a~..301122a

# ...and before that
git difftool d4e8092~..d4e8092

If you need to specify the filename, just do so with:

git difftool 04b67fb~..04b67fb -- path/to/file.c

[Recommended] How to automatically view the changes, one commit at a time, in meld, using git difft

1. Install meld as your git difftool, per my instructions.

2. Install my git difft wrapper from my eRCaGuy_dotfiles repo.

   In Linux, it runs in the terminal. In Windows, it runs in the Git Bash terminal which comes with Git for Windows.

   Installation instructions, as modified from my git diffn installation instructions here, are:

   mkdir -p ~/bin
   cd ~/bin
   curl -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ElectricRCAircraftGuy/eRCaGuy_dotfiles/master/useful_scripts/git-difft.sh
   chmod +x git-diffn.sh
   mv git-diffn.sh git-diffn
   echo 'export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
   . ~/.bashrc
   

   See also the instructions in the top of the git-difft.sh file.

3. Usage:

   # Look at changes from just one commit at at time, going backwards from the
   # current commit
   git difft
   
   # Look at changes starting from commit `commit`
   git difft commit
   

   You can also specify a set of files or folders to track, like this:

   git difft commit -- path/to/file.c path/to/folder/
   
   git difft commit -- path/to/file1 path/to/file2 path/to/file3
   
   git difft -- path/to/some/dir
   
   # etc/
   

   Press Ctrl + C, then Enter to skip the current commit and go to the next one back in time.

   Or, press Ctrl + C twice to exit the program.

   Here is the full help menu, as shown by git difft -h:

   'git-difft' version 0.2.0
   
   Iterate through all commits going backwards from HEAD to the first commit, one commit at a time,
   running 'git difftool' on each one to see the changes it introduced.
   
   - Press Ctrl + C once, then Enter, to break out of the current 'git difftool' command, but continue 
   on with the previous commit. 
   - Press Ctrl + C twice to exit out of the whole program.
   
   USAGE:
       git-difft [OPTIONS] [[commit] [commit_start~..commit_end]] -- [file1 file2 file3 ...]
   
   OPTIONS
       -h, -?
           Print help menu
       -v, --version
           Print version information.
       --
           Lists of files or directories go after this point.
   
   EXAMPLE USAGES:
       git-difft -h
           Print help menu.
       git-difft
           Start running 'git difftool' on the commit starting at HEAD (the currently-checked-out
           commit).
       git-difft HEAD
           Same as above.
       git-difft HEAD~
           Start running 'git difftool' on the commit starting at HEAD~ (one before HEAD).
       git-difft HEAD~2
           Start running 'git difftool' on the commit starting at HEAD~2 (two before HEAD).
       git-difft abcdefg
           Start running 'git difftool' on commit hash abcdefg.
       git-difft my_branch
           Start running 'git difftool' on the commit at the tip of branch 'my_branch'.
       git-difft commit1~..commit2
           Run 'git difftool' on all commits between commit1 and commit2, inclusive.    
       git-difft commit1..commit2
           Run 'git difftool' on all commits between commit1 and commit2, including commit2 but
           NOT including commit1.
       git-difft commit1~..commit2 -- file1 file2 file3
           Run 'git difftool' on all commits between commit1 and commit2, inclusive, but only
           for the files file1, file2, and file3.
       git-difft -- path/to/file1
           Start running 'git difftool' on the commit starting at HEAD, but only for the file
           "path/to/file1".
       git-difft -- path/to/dir1
           Start running 'git difftool' on the commit starting at HEAD, but only for the files
           in the directory "path/to/dir1/".
   
   This program is part of eRCaGuy_dotfiles: https://github.com/ElectricRCAircraftGuy/eRCaGuy_dotfiles
   by Gabriel Staples.
   

Bateau

Answer 23

If you use TortoiseGit you should be able to right click on the file and do TortoiseGit --> Show Log. In the window that pops up, make sure:

• 'Show Whole Project' option is not checked.

• 'All Branches' option is checked.

Jamaaljamaica

TortoiseGit (and Eclipse Git as well) somehow misses revisions of the selected file, don't count on it! – Shed

@NoamManos, I haven't encountered that issue, so I cannot verify if your statement is correct. – Jamaaljamaica

My mistake, it only happens in Eclipse, but in TortoiseGit you can see all revisions of a file if unchecking "show all project" + checking "all branches" (in case the file was committed on another branch, before it was merged to main branch). I'll update your answer. – Shed

Answer 24

git diff -U <filename> give you a unified diff.

It should be colored on red and green. If it's not, run: git config color.ui auto first.

Nuptials

Answer 25

If you are using Eclipse with the Git plugin, it has an excellent comparison view with history. Right click the file and select "Compare With" → "History".

Platinic

That won't allow you to find a deleted file however. – Cockrell

Comparing two versions of a file is different to Viewing the change history of a file – Hemimorphic

Answer 26

You can use git log command as the following:

git log -L 992,+4:path-to-file

Explanation: Here the 992 shows the line number you want to see the revision information, +4 indicates how many lines you want to see after the specified line 992. And lastly path-to-file , it generally starts with ./src/..

Ellary

Answer 27

I'm probably about where the OP was when this started, looking for something simple that would let me use git difftool with vimdiff to review changes to files in my repo starting from a specific commit. I wasn't too happy with answers I was finding, so I threw this git incremental reporter (gitincrep) script together and it's been useful to me:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

STARTWITH="${1:-}"
shift 1

DFILES=( "$@" )

RunDiff()
{
        GIT1=$1
        GIT2=$2
        shift 2

        if [ "$(git diff $GIT1 $GIT2 "$@")" ]
        then
                git log ${GIT1}..${GIT2}
                git difftool --tool=vimdiff $GIT1 $GIT2 "$@"
        fi
}

OLDVERS=""
RUNDIFF=""

for NEWVERS in $(git log --format=format:%h  --reverse)
do
        if [ "$RUNDIFF" ]
        then
                RunDiff $OLDVERS $NEWVERS "${DFILES[@]}"
        elif [ "$OLDVERS" ]
        then
                if [ "$NEWVERS" = "${STARTWITH:=${NEWVERS}}" ]
                then
                        RUNDIFF=true
                        RunDiff $OLDVERS $NEWVERS "${DFILES[@]}"
                fi
        fi
        OLDVERS=$NEWVERS
done

Called with no args, this will start from the beginning of the repo history, otherwise it will start with whatever abbreviated commit hash you provide and proceed to the present - you can ctrl-C at any time to exit. Any args after the first will limit the difference reports to include only the files listed among those args (which I think is what the OP wanted, and I'd recommend for all but tiny projects). If you're checking changes to specific files and want to start from the beginning, you'll need to provide an empty string for arg1. If you're not a vim user, you can replace vimdiff with your favorite diff tool.

Behavior is to output the commit comments when relevant changes are found and start offering vimdiff runs for each changed file (that's git difftool behavior, but it works here).

This approach is probably pretty naive, but looking through a lot of the solutions here and at a related post, many involved installing new tools on a system where I don't have admin access, with interfaces that had their own learning curve. The above script did what I wanted without dealing with any of that. I'll look into the many excellent suggestions here when I need something more sophisticated - but I think this is directly responsive to the OP.

Weariful