'git log' numbering commits?

Hi,

I have a stupid question I could not answer myself when reading the excellent documentation.

My workflow involves a lot of "git rebase -i". For figuring out which commit id to use I do first a 'git log --oneline'. Then I do copy past the id to the 'git rebase -i'. The reason why I don't use relative id such as HEAD~4, because I keep miscounting the commits.

So my question is there a magic option to have git log to enumerate the commits, e.g.

1: 2fcd2b3 network: Remove unused function 2: b376b2a session: Fix introspection for Change() 3: 15c9cd0 wifi: Refactor desctruction of network object 4: a9c699f network: Remove device pointer in network_remove() [...]

cheers, daniel

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 09:54:12AM +0200, Daniel Wagner wrote:

No, there is no such feature. You can do this:

  git log --oneline | nl "-s: "

but that will just give you the count of commits shown. If the history is not a single line of development, then those numbers will become meaningless quickly. Also note that there is an off-by-one in this scheme; HEAD~2 will be numbered as "3".

If you wanted to simply decorate each commit with a more readable name, you could do this:

  git log --format='%H: %s' |
  git name-rev --stdin --name-only

though for simplicity, you may find that you prefer to name only based on the current tip. You can do that like this:

  git log --format='%H: %s' |
  git name-rev --stdin --name-only \
    --refs `git symbolic-ref HEAD`

which yields output like:

  your-topic: network: Remove unused function
  your-topic~1: session: Fix introspection for Change()
  your-topic~2: wifi: Refactor desctruction of network object
  your-topic~3: network: Remove device pointer in network_remove()

However, if you really just want this to make "rebase -i" easier, have you considered setting the upstream branch config for your branches? When I create a topic branch, I do:

  git checkout -b topic origin/master

And then "git rebase -i @{upstream}" rebases everything up to my upstream branch (origin/master). That may be slightly more than I want, but it lets me see the whole series in the "rebase -i" sequencer. Recent versions of git even default to "@{upstream}", so you can just say "git rebase -i".

How do you usually create your branches? What version of git are you using (the "@{upstream}" default is in v1.7.6 and later)?

-Peff

Hi Jeff,

On 12.04.2012 10:41, Jeff King wrote:

Obviously, I tend to forget the power of the pipes :)

Didn't know about name-ref. Very cool :)

Maybe I should have mentioned that on those project I am mostly working, we don't have branches (ConnMan, BlueZ, oFono). So we have a very simple history.

The main reason I avoided branches is that I have several topics at the same time and having a single branch and maintaining them by hand was so far easier.

Normally I only have for big changes branches but for a few independent fixed I just use the master branch and fix the patches. But I see, I should over think my workflow here :)

I am using git trunk :) I'll try the @{upstream} trick.

Thanks a lot for this elaborate answer.

cheers, daniel

Not sure if it helps, but I use something that is somewhat easier to remember for me (specifying the upstream manualy):

git rebase -i origin/master

Philippe