Re: git whatchanged deprecation

From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com>
Date: Nov 24, 2025, 08:36 UTC
Message-ID: <26c59938-45b5-4dcf-924c-49a3d354126b@app.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CALrqSpeAiSU5JtdePf1Haygd_a08AKu6iBrO-LZDjcW8KCqJLg@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Nov 23, 2025, at 23:00, Daniel Hammer wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> Regarding:
>> $ git whatchanged
>> 'git whatchanged' is nominated for removal.
>> If you still use this command, please add an extra
>> option, '--i-still-use-this', on the command line
>> and let us know you still use it by sending an e-mail
>> to <git@vger.kernel.org>.  Thanks.
>> fatal: refusing to run without --i-still-use-this
>
> I still use this, usually multiple times a day.
>
>
> The flag approach seems unnecessarily heavy handed, when amending the
> documentation would have sufficed.

This was added to the documentation in 2013:

    New users are encouraged to use [git-log(1)] instead. ...

    The command is primarily kept for historical reasons; ...

The version you are on (2.51.0) finally said that it was deprecated.

The heavy-handed `--i-still-use-this` is meant to alert users (who may not read the updated documentation) that the command is going away.

Breaking changes overall are documented in https://git-scm.com/docs/BreakingChanges

> As far as I can tell from the documentation, this is just shorthand
> for a(nother) counter-intuitive git command.

Then you know that `git whatchanged` can be replaced with `git log --raw`. Well, a closer equivalent is

    git log --raw --no-merges

But you can keep typing `git whatchanged` on Git versions 2.51.1, 2.51.2, and 2.52.0 by setting up an alias with that name:

    git config set --global alias.whatchanged 'log --raw --no-merges'

> Hope this DevEx regression is reversed ASAP.

That won’t happen.