Git blame showing no history

Question

When I run git blame on a file (using msysgit) I always get the following sort of printout:

00000000 (Not Committed Yet 2011-01-09 11:21:30 +0200   1) package co
00000000 (Not Committed Yet 2011-01-09 11:21:30 +0200   2) {
00000000 (Not Committed Yet 2011-01-09 11:21:30 +0200   3)      impor
00000000 (Not Committed Yet 2011-01-09 11:21:30 +0200   4)      impor
00000000 (Not Committed Yet 2011-01-09 11:21:30 +0200   5)      impor
00000000 (Not Committed Yet 2011-01-09 11:21:30 +0200   6)      impor
00000000 (Not Committed Yet 2011-01-09 11:21:30 +0200   7)      impor

i.e. it shows all lines as Not Yet Committed.

I tried this on many files, that have many commits - always the same results. I also tried using relative/full path, but it seems to make no difference.

When I try to use TortoiseGit's blame it always shows every line as being last committed at the first commit:

even thought, as I've said, there are actually tens of commits in the history of these files..

Ideas?

Edit - More Info

• Git blame works fine on GitHub, where this repo is hosted.
• It also works fine if I clone it to a linux machine and do the blame there
• It seems that only on msysgit this doesn't work

Vagarious

For me this problem resulted from using a symlinked path as apposed to a path that the repository recognized, so it thought the file was completely new. – Furfuraceous

Note: Starting git 2.0.1 (June 25th, 2014), git blame should stop reporting all those "Not Yet Committed" lines. See my answer below – Georgettageorgette

On the mailing list: git.661346.n2.nabble.com/… Also happens on Linux. – Exemplum

This also affects WSL, so I've added the tag. Hope that's OK. – Evelineevelinn

Answer 1

git blame file.txt blames the version of file.txt in your working copy. If file.txt has Windows-newlines (CRLF) in the repo and you have core.autocrlf = true, then every line of file.txt will be considered different and will be reported by git blame as not yet committed.

The reason why git blame <my_branch> (or even better git blame HEAD, which works no matter what branch you're on) works, is that it doesn't blame the working copy version so there's no potential for lines not yet being committed.

Loralorain

git blame -w ignores the whitespace, so you can still blame against the working copy if desired – Ansley

Git blame -w should be a separate answer and the accepted one ;). Accepted answer without the comment was useless for me. – Gibbeon

Answer 2

Found the solution - very weird.

If I run this:

git blame file.txt

The history is broken, as posted above.

If I do this instead:

git blame my_branch file.txt

It works!

This is very weird, because AFAICS the usage doesn't require a branch name:

$ git blame
usage: git blame [options] [rev-opts] [rev] [--] file

Vagarious

This works for me, thanks for posting it. You should mark this one as the answer IMO. – Cheekbone

This works for me in msysgit but the filename is case-sensitive. So I can write git blame mybranch cmakelists.txt and it will fail; but if I write git blame mybranch CMakeLists.txt it will work. – Swami

I agree, wes; blame was showing no history until I specified the branch, and that is inconsistent with the documentation. – Trefoil

OMG, blame is so broken. – Exemplum

Answer 3

Starting git 2.0.1 (June 25th, 2014), git blame should stop reporting all those "Not Yet Committed" lines.

See commit 4d4813a (26 Apr 2014) by brian m. carlson (bk2204).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit e934c67, 06 Jun 2014)}

blame: correctly handle files regardless of autocrlf

If a file contained CRLF line endings in a repository with core.autocrlf=input, then blame always marked lines as "Not Committed Yet", even if they were unmodified.
Don't attempt to convert the line endings when creating the fake commit so that blame works correctly regardless of the autocrlf setting.

---

radon8472 adds in the comments:

the answer was git blame -w (iggnore whitespace).
The reason was that the textconv for my blamed file was working with windows linebreaks, and git blame seems to not like it, as mentioned in kusma's answer.

Georgettageorgette

I still have the problem in git v2.1.3 – Faraway

I have the problem with git version 2.16.1.windows.1 – Viewfinder

@Viewfinder Can you add a new question illustrating the issue, with your git config -l output (and a link back to this answer): that will allow me and others to try and see if the issue persists. – Georgettageorgette

@Georgettageorgette There is no need to do this, the answer was git blame -w . The reason was that the textconv for my blamed file was working with windows linebreaks, and git blame seems to not like this see @kusama s answer below – Viewfinder

@Viewfinder Thank you for the feedback. I have included your comment in the answer for more visibility. – Georgettageorgette

Answer 4

Another possibility: case-sensitive filename typo

I had the same problem with git blame file.txt, then realized that I'd made a case-sensitive filename typo with file.txt

Changed it to File.txt (for example), and I got the expected results w/o having to specify my_branch: git blame File.txt

Uxoricide