Re: Usage of git whatchanged

From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com>
Date: Sep 14, 2025, 19:44 UTC
Message-ID: <9bcd2f6e-8646-4b93-b2b2-fa1ccac5442b@app.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <aMcYrG3XBZc9Yu_L@eismeer>

On Sun, Sep 14, 2025, at 21:34, Bjoern Bastian wrote:

Show 29 quoted lines

> Hi Kristoffer,
>
>> You can also make a Git alias.
>>
>>     git config set --global alias.wh 'log --raw --no-merges'
>
> neat, thank you, I never noticed the Git aliases.  I'll do that.
>
>> > One can live without, but the statement "whatchanged is not even shorter
>> > to type than log --raw." on https://git-scm.com/docs/git-whatchanged is
>> > a weak one
>>
>> I have a proposal to remove it.
>
> Makes sense to me.
>
>> > that misses obvious use cases of `whatchanged`.
>>
>> The thing with git-whatchanged is that it uses the same underlying
>> machinery as git-log.  So there’s nothing that git-whatchanged can do
>> that git-log cannot do.
>>
>> ... and I guess vice versa.  But historically git-log ended up as the
>> new-and-better replacement (according to the devs) with git-whatchanged
>> being kept around for people who was used to typing it.
>
> Knowing Git aliases, there is actually no reason to keep `whatchanged`.
> Without the idea to enforce `--i-still-use-this` in the transition time,
> this would allow users to continue with their habits if they like to.

Sure, you can use something like that `wh` alias.

But note that you cannot make an alias like this named simply `whatchanged` (the same name as the command):

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

(in order to continue with the same habits exactly, verbatim)

Because you cannot currently make an alias that has the same name as a command like this one. But it looks like that restriction will be lifted for deprecated commands in a future version.