# git log: add '--merges' flag to match '--no-merges'

2 messages from 2009-06-29 to 2009-06-29. Participants: Linus Torvalds.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/19965

## Linus Torvalds, 2009-06-29 17:28

Subject: git log: add '--merges' flag to match '--no-merges'
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.01.0906291015210.3605@localhost.localdomain>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/alpine.LFD.2.01.0906291015210.3605%40localhost.localdomain

```

I do various statistics on git, and one of the things I look at is merges, 
because they are often interesting events to count ("how many merges vs 
how much 'real development'" kind of statistics). And you can do it with 
some fairly straightforward scripting, ie

	git rev-list --parents HEAD |
		grep ' .* ' |
		git diff-tree --always -s --pretty=oneline --stdin |
		less -S

will do it.

But I finally got irritated with the fact that we can skip merges with 
'--no-merges', but we can't do the trivial reverse operation.

So this just adds a '--merges' flag that _only_ shows merges. Now you can 
do the above with just a

	git log --merges --pretty=oneline

which is a lot simpler. It also means that we automatically get a lot of 
statistics for free, eg

	git shortlog -ns --merges

does exactly what you'd want it to do.

Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
---
 revision.c |    4 ++++
 revision.h |    1 +
 2 files changed, 5 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/revision.c b/revision.c
index bf58448..a31434b 100644
--- a/revision.c
+++ b/revision.c
@@ -1077,6 +1077,8 @@ static int handle_revision_opt(struct rev_info *revs, int argc, const char **arg
 		revs->show_all = 1;
 	} else if (!strcmp(arg, "--remove-empty")) {
 		revs->remove_empty_trees = 1;
+	} else if (!strcmp(arg, "--merges")) {
+		revs->merges_only = 1;
 	} else if (!strcmp(arg, "--no-merges")) {
 		revs->no_merges = 1;
 	} else if (!strcmp(arg, "--boundary")) {
@@ -1676,6 +1678,8 @@ enum commit_action simplify_commit(struct rev_info *revs, struct commit *commit)
 		return commit_ignore;
 	if (revs->no_merges && commit->parents && commit->parents->next)
 		return commit_ignore;
+	if (revs->merges_only && !(commit->parents && commit->parents->next))
+		return commit_ignore;
 	if (!commit_match(commit, revs))
 		return commit_ignore;
 	if (revs->prune && revs->dense) {
diff --git a/revision.h b/revision.h
index 227164c..fb74492 100644
--- a/revision.h
+++ b/revision.h
@@ -36,6 +36,7 @@ struct rev_info {
 	unsigned int	dense:1,
 			prune:1,
 			no_merges:1,
+			merges_only:1,
 			no_walk:1,
 			show_all:1,
 			remove_empty_trees:1,

```

## Linus Torvalds, 2009-06-29 18:15

Subject: Re: git log: add '--merges' flag to match '--no-merges'
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.2.01.0906291112520.3605@localhost.localdomain>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/alpine.LFD.2.01.0906291112520.3605%40localhost.localdomain
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.2.01.0906291015210.3605@localhost.localdomain>

```


On Mon, 29 Jun 2009, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> So this just adds a '--merges' flag that _only_ shows merges.

Side note: if somebody wants to make this flag be called "--merges-only", 
and then adds a "--merges" flag that clears both the no_merges and 
merges_only flag, I wouldn't complain. That _might_ be useful to override 
default behaviour (say, if some alias/command were to default to not 
showing merges, then adding "--merges" would make it show all commits).

Dunno. I don't personally much care, but I thought I'd mention it as an 
alternative approach to this issue.

		Linus

```