Re: Pretty date option for git tag?

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: May 18, 2009, 17:20 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.01.0905181015080.3301@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <4A118696.80902@drmicha.warpmail.net>

On Mon, 18 May 2009, Michael J Gruber wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> 
> You might want to experiment with
> 
> git log --tags --simplify-by-decoration --pretty="format:%ai %s"
> 
> which may show a few more commits than just the tags but comes close to
> the output you envisage.

Ooh, evil. I like it.

It's a rather expensive operation, but it does have the really nice property that it will show the date of the commit the tag is pointing to, rather than necessarily the date of the tag itself (which is not well-defined unless the tag is signed).

As you mention, "--simplify-by-decoration" will show merges too (unless it can linearize the tag history), but you can work around that by making the format be "format:%ai %d" where that '%d' shows the decoration of the commit, rather than the commit summary. Now the merges that aren't tagged stand out very clearly.

Of course, the above will just work for commit tags. If you've tagged a tree or a blob, the above gives you bubkis.

			Linus