git-rev-list(1) Manual Page

NAME

git - rev-list - Lists commit objects in reverse chronological order

SYNOPSIS

git-rev-list [ —max-count=number ] [ —max-age=timestamp ] [ —min-age=timestamp ] [ —merge-order [ —show-breaks ] ] <commit>

DESCRIPTION

Lists commit objects in reverse chronological order starting at the given commit, taking ancestry relationship into account. This is useful to produce human-readable log output.

If —merge-order is specified, the commit history is decomposed into a unique sequence of minimal, non-linear epochs and maximal, linear epochs. Non-linear epochs are then linearised by sorting them into merge order, which is described below.

Maximal, linear epochs correspond to periods of sequential development. Minimal, non-linear epochs correspond to periods of divergent development followed by a converging merge. The theory of epochs is described in more detail at http://blackcubes.dyndns.org/epoch/.

The merge order for a non-linear epoch is defined as a linearisation for which the following invariants are true:

  1. if a commit P is reachable from commit N, commit P sorts after commit N in the linearised list.

  2. if Pi and Pj are any two parents of a merge M (with i < j), then any commit N, such that N is reachable from Pj but not reachable from Pi, sorts before all commits reachable from Pi.

Invariant 1 states that later commits appear before earlier commits they are derived from.

Invariant 2 states that commits unique to "later" parents in a merge, appear before all commits from "earlier" parents of a merge.

If —show-breaks is specified, each item of the list is output with a 2-character prefix consisting of one of: (|), (^), (=) followed by a space.

Commits marked with (=) represent the boundaries of minimal, non-linear epochs and correspond either to the start of a period of divergent development or to the end of such a period.

Commits marked with (|) are direct parents of commits immediately preceding the marked commit in the list.

Commits marked with (^) are not parents of the immediately preceding commit. These "breaks" represent necessary discontinuities implied by trying to represent an arbtirary DAG in a linear form.

—show-breaks is only valid if —merge-order is also specified.

Author

Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

Original —merge-order logic by Jon Seymour <jon.seymour@gmail.com>

Documentation

Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.

GIT

Part of the git(7) suite