Re: whatchanged

From: Kristoffer Haugsbakk <kristofferhaugsbakk@fastmail.com>
Date: Feb 28, 2026, 21:30 UTC
Message-ID: <af273fb9-25ae-48e4-ae06-81424383f54d@app.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <de1a96a4-c38e-4200-90a6-2b87139cdb47@app.fastmail.com>

On Sat, Feb 28, 2026, at 21:22, Martin Stensgård wrote:

> git version 2.51.0 told me to let you know that I still use the
> whatchanged command.
>
> Please keep it. Thanks :)

This command is being removed because it was supplanted by git-log(1) a long while ago. Both commands use the same machinery, just with different defaults.

You can replace it with `git log` in this way:

• Given: `git whatchanged <opts>` • Replace with: `git log <opts> --no-merges --raw`

Additionally for the sake of readability, you might have more use for `--stat` or `--name-only` rather than `--raw` if you are only reading the output (not feeding the output to another program).

You can also set up an alias with that name on Git 2.52:

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

You cannot do that on Git 2.51.0 since you cannot alias builtin commands. But you can alias deprecated builtin commands on Git 2.52.