How to show "bisect" refs in "git log"?

Brendan McDonnell· Jun 26, 2025, 17:58 UTC · lore

I use this command
  git log --all --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit
frequently to visualize a repo's commit history.

It used to include "bisect" references in the output, until ~a couple years ago IIRC. Is there a way I can modify this command so that it includes them again, without excluding any references that it already includes? (Appending "--decorate-refs=refs/*" includes the bisect refs, but excludes some others that are there without it.)

Is this behavior change a bug, or intentional?
 - If intentional, why? And is it documented anywhere?
 - If it's a bug, should I report it somewhere (else)?

Thanks,

Brendan

Jeff King· Jun 26, 2025, 18:38 UTC · re: Brendan McDonnell · lore

Re: How to show "bisect" refs in "git log"?

On Thu, Jun 26, 2025 at 01:58:11PM -0400, Brendan McDonnell wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> I use this command
>   git log --all --graph --decorate --pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit
> frequently to visualize a repo's commit history.
> 
> It used to include "bisect" references in the output, until ~a couple
> years ago IIRC. Is there a way I can modify this command so that it
> includes them again, without excluding any references that it already
> includes? (Appending "--decorate-refs=refs/*" includes the bisect
> refs, but excludes some others that are there without it.)
> 
> Is this behavior change a bug, or intentional?
>  - If intentional, why? And is it documented anywhere?
>  - If it's a bug, should I report it somewhere (else)?

This is due to 92156291ca (log: add default decoration filter, 2022-08-05). That commit doesn't mention bisect refs, but there's some discussion in this sub-thread:

  https://lore.kernel.org/git/kl6lr10l8t7y.fsf@chooglen-macbookpro.roam.corp.google.com/

There are some possible directions there for adding them to the default set in a cleaner way. In the meantime, doing:

  git config log.initialDecorationSet all

will restore the old behavior.

-Peff