Getting the "message" given a branch designation and conversely

I am learning how to use git. I would like to know how:

Given a branch's designation, such as "master~4", how can I see the message I furnished when I created the branch using "git commit"?

Conversely, given the message I furnished to "git commit", when I created a branch, how can I see the branch's designation?

Context:

    Operating System: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation release 6.8

    git version: 1.7.1

Thank you, very much.

    Norman Shapiro

From: <norm@dad.org>

Norman,

To see the commit message try 'git log'. You will need a revision range, so try 'git help revisions' to set a guide about all the different ways you can spell that. While at it, it's worth 'git help glossary' just to understand some of the terminology.

-- Philip 'git log HEAD~4^!'

On Sun, Aug 14, 2016 at 07:58:14AM -0700, norm@dad.org wrote:

Somebody already pointed you at "git log", which is the right tool for looking at commit messages (or perhaps "git show" if you only want to see a single entry).

Try "git log --grep=some.regex" to find a particular commit. Usually we refer to commits by their sha1 id, which will be shown by git-log. However, you can use git-describe to generate a name for any commit that is based on traversing from a tag. Try:

  git describe --contains --all <sha1>

for example. Using "--all" tells git to consider names based on branches as well as tags. Using "--contains" will generate a name based on traversing backwards from the tags and branches (like "master~4") rather than basing the name on a tag that you build off of.

-Peff

W dniu 15.08.2016 o 14:28, Jeff King pisze:

I think you would want "git log -1 master~4" or "git show master~4" to see the commit message of a single commit (without diff).

There is also :/<search> and <rev>^{/<search>} syntax, if you want composability (see gitrevisions(7)).

The "git describe --contains" is interface to "git name-rev" plumbing