Re: git shortlog --committer vs --committer=<pattern>

From: Pushkar Singh <pushkarkumarsingh1970@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 13, 2026, 18:01 UTC
Message-ID: <CALE2CrS9YAqnX8ikNYzyD_i3H1rzhFQvKLijbnbkZh7VqOSZOQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CALE2CrSUFt_HGy1+9H08OMZLTjdZt=NZsqvqa1a-rbvDOzjVWw@mail.gmail.com>

Follow up to my previous mail.

After checking the generated git-shortlog(1) and git shortlog --help, both --committer (grouping) and --committer=<pattern> (commit limiting) are indeed documented correctly.

The real issue is the option parser ambiguity that Junio described, where --committer=foo is parsed as the grouping option and rejected, even though the filtering form exists.

So this is not a documentation error but a command line parsing limitation. Thanks for the clarification.

On Tue, Jan 13, 2026 at 9:50 PM Pushkar Singh <pushkarkumarsingh1970@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 43 quoted lines

>
> Hi Junio,
>
> Thanks for the clarification.
>
> I confirmed that this comes from git-shortlog pulling in
> Documentation/rev-list-options.adoc, which documents
> --author=<pattern> and --committer=<pattern>, even though
> git shortlog treats --committer as an alias for --group=committer
> and therefore cannot accept a value.
>
> So this looks like a documentation mismatch rather than just
> the website.
>
> I will prepare a documentation patch to make git-shortlog’s
> options unambiguous.
>
> Thanks,
> Pushkar
>
> On Tue, Jan 13, 2026 at 9:28 PM <rsbecker@nexbridge.com> wrote:
> >
> > On January 13, 2026 10:23 AM, Manuel Rego Casasnovas wrote:
> > >Doing something like this in a Git repository returns an error (git version 2.51.0):
> > >$ git shortlog --committer=foo
> > >error: option `committer' takes no value
> > >
> > >However the option "--committer=<pattern>" is in the documentation:
> > >https://git-scm.com/docs/git-shortlog#Documentation/git-shortlog.txt---
> > >committerpattern
> > >
> > >But it seems to be in conflict with "--committer":
> > >https://git-scm.com/docs/git-shortlog#Documentation/git-shortlog.txt---
> > >committer
> > >
> > >It would be nice to either allow using "--committer=<pattern>" for shortlog, or if
> > >that's not possible fix the documentation.
> >
> > I do not see --committer=<pattern>, but do see --committer pattern in the online
> > help and documentation. --committer is an alias for --group=committer.
> > Pattern applies to the log entries.
> >
> >