git-rev-list - Lists commit objects in reverse chronological order
git-rev-list [ --max-count=number ] [ --max-age=timestamp ] [ --min-age=timestamp ] [ --bisect ] [ --pretty ] [ --objects ] [ --merge-order [ --show-breaks ] ] <commit> [ <commit> …] [ ^<commit> …]
Lists commit objects in reverse chronological order starting at the given commit(s), taking ancestry relationship into account. This is useful to produce human-readable log output.
Commits which are stated with a preceding ^ cause listing to stop at that point. Their parents are implied. "git-rev-list foo bar ^baz" thus means "list all the commits which are included in foo and bar, but not in baz".
If --pretty is specified, print the contents of the commit changesets in human-readable form.
The --objects flag causes git-rev-list to print the object IDs of any object referenced by the listed commits. git-rev-list --objects foo ^bar thus means "send me all object IDs which I need to download if I have the commit object bar, but not foo".
The --bisect flag limits output to the one commit object which is roughly halfway between the included and excluded commits. Thus, if "git-rev-list --bisect foo bar baz" outputs midpoint, the output of "git-rev-list foo midpoint" and "git-rev-list midpoint bar ^baz" would be of roughly the same length. Finding the change which introduces a regression is thus reduced to a binary search: repeatedly generate and test new 'midpoint's until the commit chain is of length one.
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:
if a commit P is reachable from commit N, commit P sorts after commit N in the linearised list.
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.
Written by Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Original --merge-order logic by Jon Seymour <jon.seymour@gmail.com>
Documentation by David Greaves, Junio C Hamano and the git-list <git@vger.kernel.org>.
Part of the git suite