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

From: Pushkar Singh <pushkarkumarsingh1970@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 13, 2026, 16:20 UTC
Message-ID: <CALE2CrSUFt_HGy1+9H08OMZLTjdZt=NZsqvqa1a-rbvDOzjVWw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <018701dc84a4$39555970$ac000c50$@nexbridge.com>

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:

Show 22 quoted lines

>
> 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.
>
>