Re: how to display file history?

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: May 15, 2006, 15:15 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0605150811400.3866@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <CFF307C98FEABE47A452B27C06B85BB670F4F8@hdsmsx411.amr.corp.intel.com>

On Mon, 15 May 2006, Brown, Len wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

>
> it is tiresome to access kernel.org/git tree display
> to see the list of commits that changed a particular file.
> (and for files on my local disk, this isn't available).
> 
> How do I print the list of commits that change a particular file
> on my local disk?

Just do

	git whatchanged -p <file>

which has worked pretty much since day one. In fact, it's much better than that. The "file" can be any abritrary combination of files and/or directories, and it will track them all at the same time. So

	git whatchanged -p arch/ia64 include/asm-ia64

will track the ia64-specific changes.

Newer git versions (ie 1.3.x+) support this in "git log" too (it worked on older gits, but it was unacceptably slow, so you might as well consider it "nonworking"). So

	git log [-p] <filespec>

is your friend.

Finally, as usual, "gitk" is just a fancier log viewer. So just do

	gitk arch/ia64 include/asm-ia64

and enjoy.

You really shouldn't go to gitweb. The history view of gitweb is much less capable than any local view.

		Linus