GIT-SHORTLOG(1) Git Manual GIT-SHORTLOG(1)

NAME

git-shortlog - Summarize 'git log' output

SYNOPSIS

git shortlog [<options>] [<revision-range>] [[--] <path>...]
git log --pretty=short | git shortlog [<options>]

DESCRIPTION

Summarizes git log output in a format suitable for inclusion in
release announcements. Each commit will be grouped by author and
title.

Additionally, "[PATCH]" will be stripped from the commit description.

If no revisions are passed on the command line and either standard
input is not a terminal or there is no current branch, git shortlog
will output a summary of the log read from standard input, without
reference to the current repository.

OPTIONS

-n, --numbered
Sort output according to the number of commits per author instead
of author alphabetic order.

-s, --summary
Suppress commit description and provide a commit count summary
only.

-e, --email
Show the email address of each author.

--format[=<format>]
Instead of the commit subject, use some other information to
describe each commit. <format> can be any string accepted by the
--format option of git log, such as * [%h] %s. (See the "PRETTY
FORMATS" section of git-log(1).)

Each pretty-printed commit will be rewrapped before it is shown.

--date=<format>
Show dates formatted according to the given date string. (See the
--date option in the "Commit Formatting" section of git-log(1)).
Useful with --group=format:<format>.

--group=<type>
Group commits based on <type>. If no --group option is specified,
the default is author. <type> is one of:

+o author, commits are grouped by author

+o committer, commits are grouped by committer (the same as -c)

+o trailer:<field>, the <field> is interpreted as a
case-insensitive commit message trailer (see git-interpret-
trailers(1)). For example, if your project uses Reviewed-by
trailers, you might want to see who has been reviewing with
git shortlog -ns --group=trailer:reviewed-by.

+o format:<format>, any string accepted by the --format option
of git log. (See the "PRETTY FORMATS" section of git-log(1).)

Note that commits that do not include the trailer will not be
counted. Likewise, commits with multiple trailers (e.g.,
multiple signoffs) may be counted more than once (but only
once per unique trailer value in that commit).

Shortlog will attempt to parse each trailer value as a name
<email> identity. If successful, the mailmap is applied and
the email is omitted unless the --email option is specified.
If the value cannot be parsed as an identity, it will be
taken literally and completely.

If --group is specified multiple times, commits are counted under
each value (but again, only once per unique value in that
commit). For example, git shortlog --group=author
--group=trailer:co-authored-by counts both authors and
co-authors.

-c, --committer
This is an alias for --group=committer.

-w[<width>[,<indent1>[,<indent2>]]]
Linewrap the output by wrapping each line at width. The first
line of each entry is indented by indent1 spaces, and the second
and subsequent lines are indented by indent2 spaces. width,
indent1, and indent2 default to 76, 6 and 9 respectively.

If width is 0 (zero) then indent the lines of the output without
wrapping them.

<revision-range>
Show only commits in the specified revision range. When no
<revision-range> is specified, it defaults to HEAD (i.e. the
whole history leading to the current commit). origin..HEAD
specifies all the commits reachable from the current commit (i.e.
HEAD), but not from origin. For a complete list of ways to spell
<revision-range>, see the "Specifying Ranges" section of
gitrevisions(7).

[--] <path>...
Consider only commits that are enough to explain how the files
that match the specified paths came to be.

Paths may need to be prefixed with -- to separate them from
options or the revision range, when confusion arises.

Commit Limiting

Besides specifying a range of commits that should be listed using the
special notations explained in the description, additional commit
limiting may be applied.

Using more options generally further limits the output (e.g.
--since=<date1> limits to commits newer than <date1>, and using it
with --grep=<pattern> further limits to commits whose log message has
a line that matches <pattern>), unless otherwise noted.

Note that these are applied before commit ordering and formatting
options, such as --reverse.

-<number>, -n <number>, --max-count=<number>
Limit the number of commits to output.

--skip=<number>
Skip number commits before starting to show the commit output.

--since=<date>, --after=<date>
Show commits more recent than a specific date.

--since-as-filter=<date>
Show all commits more recent than a specific date. This visits
all commits in the range, rather than stopping at the first
commit which is older than a specific date.

--until=<date>, --before=<date>
Show commits older than a specific date.

--author=<pattern>, --committer=<pattern>
Limit the commits output to ones with author/committer header
lines that match the specified pattern (regular expression). With
more than one --author=<pattern>, commits whose author matches
any of the given patterns are chosen (similarly for multiple
--committer=<pattern>).

--grep-reflog=<pattern>
Limit the commits output to ones with reflog entries that match
the specified pattern (regular expression). With more than one
--grep-reflog, commits whose reflog message matches any of the
given patterns are chosen. It is an error to use this option
unless --walk-reflogs is in use.

--grep=<pattern>
Limit the commits output to ones with a log message that matches
the specified pattern (regular expression). With more than one
--grep=<pattern>, commits whose message matches any of the given
patterns are chosen (but see --all-match).

When --notes is in effect, the message from the notes is matched
as if it were part of the log message.

--all-match
Limit the commits output to ones that match all given --grep,
instead of ones that match at least one.

--invert-grep
Limit the commits output to ones with a log message that do not
match the pattern specified with --grep=<pattern>.

-i, --regexp-ignore-case
Match the regular expression limiting patterns without regard to
letter case.

--basic-regexp
Consider the limiting patterns to be basic regular expressions;
this is the default.

-E, --extended-regexp
Consider the limiting patterns to be extended regular expressions
instead of the default basic regular expressions.

-F, --fixed-strings
Consider the limiting patterns to be fixed strings (don't
interpret pattern as a regular expression).

-P, --perl-regexp
Consider the limiting patterns to be Perl-compatible regular
expressions.

Support for these types of regular expressions is an optional
compile-time dependency. If Git wasn't compiled with support for
them providing this option will cause it to die.

--remove-empty
Stop when a given path disappears from the tree.

--merges
Print only merge commits. This is exactly the same as
--min-parents=2.

--no-merges
Do not print commits with more than one parent. This is exactly
the same as --max-parents=1.

--min-parents=<number>, --max-parents=<number>, --no-min-parents,
--no-max-parents
Show only commits which have at least (or at most) that many
parent commits. In particular, --max-parents=1 is the same as
--no-merges, --min-parents=2 is the same as --merges.
--max-parents=0 gives all root commits and --min-parents=3 all
octopus merges.

--no-min-parents and --no-max-parents reset these limits (to no
limit) again. Equivalent forms are --min-parents=0 (any commit
has 0 or more parents) and --max-parents=-1 (negative numbers
denote no upper limit).

--first-parent
When finding commits to include, follow only the first parent
commit upon seeing a merge commit. This option can give a better
overview when viewing the evolution of a particular topic branch,
because merges into a topic branch tend to be only about
adjusting to updated upstream from time to time, and this option
allows you to ignore the individual commits brought in to your
history by such a merge.

--exclude-first-parent-only
When finding commits to exclude (with a ^), follow only the first
parent commit upon seeing a merge commit. This can be used to
find the set of changes in a topic branch from the point where it
diverged from the remote branch, given that arbitrary merges can
be valid topic branch changes.

--not
Reverses the meaning of the ^ prefix (or lack thereof) for all
following revision specifiers, up to the next --not. When used on
the command line before --stdin, the revisions passed through
stdin will not be affected by it. Conversely, when passed via
standard input, the revisions passed on the command line will not
be affected by it.

--all
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/, along with HEAD, are listed
on the command line as <commit>.

--branches[=<pattern>]
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/heads are listed on the
command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit branches
to ones matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, *, or [,
/* at the end is implied.

--tags[=<pattern>]
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/tags are listed on the command
line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit tags to ones
matching given shell glob. If pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the
end is implied.

--remotes[=<pattern>]
Pretend as if all the refs in refs/remotes are listed on the
command line as <commit>. If <pattern> is given, limit
remote-tracking branches to ones matching given shell glob. If
pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the end is implied.

--glob=<glob-pattern>
Pretend as if all the refs matching shell glob <glob-pattern> are
listed on the command line as <commit>. Leading refs/, is
automatically prepended if missing. If pattern lacks ?, *, or [,
/* at the end is implied.

--exclude=<glob-pattern>
Do not include refs matching <glob-pattern> that the next --all,
--branches, --tags, --remotes, or --glob would otherwise
consider. Repetitions of this option accumulate exclusion
patterns up to the next --all, --branches, --tags, --remotes, or
--glob option (other options or arguments do not clear
accumulated patterns).

The patterns given should not begin with refs/heads, refs/tags,
or refs/remotes when applied to --branches, --tags, or --remotes,
respectively, and they must begin with refs/ when applied to
--glob or --all. If a trailing /* is intended, it must be given
explicitly.

--exclude-hidden=[fetch|receive|uploadpack]
Do not include refs that would be hidden by git-fetch,
git-receive-pack or git-upload-pack by consulting the appropriate
fetch.hideRefs, receive.hideRefs or uploadpack.hideRefs
configuration along with transfer.hideRefs (see git-config(1)).
This option affects the next pseudo-ref option --all or --glob
and is cleared after processing them.

--reflog
Pretend as if all objects mentioned by reflogs are listed on the
command line as <commit>.

--alternate-refs
Pretend as if all objects mentioned as ref tips of alternate
repositories were listed on the command line. An alternate
repository is any repository whose object directory is specified
in objects/info/alternates. The set of included objects may be
modified by core.alternateRefsCommand, etc. See git-config(1).

--single-worktree
By default, all working trees will be examined by the following
options when there are more than one (see git-worktree(1)):
--all, --reflog and --indexed-objects. This option forces them to
examine the current working tree only.

--ignore-missing
Upon seeing an invalid object name in the input, pretend as if
the bad input was not given.

--bisect
Pretend as if the bad bisection ref refs/bisect/bad was listed
and as if it was followed by --not and the good bisection refs
refs/bisect/good-* on the command line.

--stdin
In addition to getting arguments from the command line, read them
from standard input as well. This accepts commits and
pseudo-options like --all and --glob=. When a -- separator is
seen, the following input is treated as paths and used to limit
the result. Flags like --not which are read via standard input
are only respected for arguments passed in the same way and will
not influence any subsequent command line arguments.

--cherry-mark
Like --cherry-pick (see below) but mark equivalent commits with =
rather than omitting them, and inequivalent ones with +.

--cherry-pick
Omit any commit that introduces the same change as another commit
on the "other side" when the set of commits are limited with
symmetric difference.

For example, if you have two branches, A and B, a usual way to
list all commits on only one side of them is with --left-right
(see the example below in the description of the --left-right
option). However, it shows the commits that were cherry-picked
from the other branch (for example, "3rd on b" may be
cherry-picked from branch A). With this option, such pairs of
commits are excluded from the output.

--left-only, --right-only
List only commits on the respective side of a symmetric
difference, i.e. only those which would be marked < resp. > by
--left-right.

For example, --cherry-pick --right-only A...B omits those commits
from B which are in A or are patch-equivalent to a commit in A.
In other words, this lists the + commits from git cherry A B.
More precisely, --cherry-pick --right-only --no-merges gives the
exact list.

--cherry
A synonym for --right-only --cherry-mark --no-merges; useful to
limit the output to the commits on our side and mark those that
have been applied to the other side of a forked history with git
log --cherry upstream...mybranch, similar to git cherry upstream
mybranch.

-g, --walk-reflogs
Instead of walking the commit ancestry chain, walk reflog entries
from the most recent one to older ones. When this option is used
you cannot specify commits to exclude (that is, ^commit,
commit1..commit2, and commit1...commit2 notations cannot be
used).

With --pretty format other than oneline and reference (for
obvious reasons), this causes the output to have two extra lines
of information taken from the reflog. The reflog designator in
the output may be shown as ref@{<Nth>} (where <Nth> is the
reverse-chronological index in the reflog) or as
ref@{<timestamp>} (with the <timestamp> for that entry),
depending on a few rules:

1. If the starting point is specified as ref@{<Nth>}, show the
index format.

2. If the starting point was specified as ref@{now}, show the
timestamp format.

3. If neither was used, but --date was given on the command
line, show the timestamp in the format requested by --date.

4. Otherwise, show the index format.

Under --pretty=oneline, the commit message is prefixed with this
information on the same line. This option cannot be combined with
--reverse. See also git-reflog(1).

Under --pretty=reference, this information will not be shown at
all.

--merge
Show commits touching conflicted paths in the range
HEAD...<other>, where <other> is the first existing pseudoref in
MERGE_HEAD, CHERRY_PICK_HEAD, REVERT_HEAD or REBASE_HEAD. Only
works when the index has unmerged entries. This option can be
used to show relevant commits when resolving conflicts from a
3-way merge.

--boundary
Output excluded boundary commits. Boundary commits are prefixed
with -.

History Simplification

Sometimes you are only interested in parts of the history, for
example the commits modifying a particular <path>. But there are two
parts of History Simplification, one part is selecting the commits
and the other is how to do it, as there are various strategies to
simplify the history.

The following options select the commits to be shown:

<paths>
Commits modifying the given <paths> are selected.

--simplify-by-decoration
Commits that are referred by some branch or tag are selected.

Note that extra commits can be shown to give a meaningful history.

The following options affect the way the simplification is performed:

Default mode
Simplifies the history to the simplest history explaining the
final state of the tree. Simplest because it prunes some side
branches if the end result is the same (i.e. merging branches
with the same content)

--show-pulls
Include all commits from the default mode, but also any merge
commits that are not TREESAME to the first parent but are
TREESAME to a later parent. This mode is helpful for showing the
merge commits that "first introduced" a change to a branch.

--full-history
Same as the default mode, but does not prune some history.

--dense
Only the selected commits are shown, plus some to have a
meaningful history.

--sparse
All commits in the simplified history are shown.

--simplify-merges
Additional option to --full-history to remove some needless
merges from the resulting history, as there are no selected
commits contributing to this merge.

--ancestry-path[=<commit>]
When given a range of commits to display (e.g. commit1..commit2
or commit2 ^commit1), and a commit <commit> in that range, only
display commits in that range that are ancestors of <commit>,
descendants of <commit>, or <commit> itself. If no commit is
specified, use commit1 (the excluded part of the range) as
<commit>. Can be passed multiple times; if so, a commit is
included if it is any of the commits given or if it is an
ancestor or descendant of one of them.

A more detailed explanation follows.

Suppose you specified foo as the <paths>. We shall call commits that
modify foo !TREESAME, and the rest TREESAME. (In a diff filtered for
foo, they look different and equal, respectively.)

In the following, we will always refer to the same example history to
illustrate the differences between simplification settings. We assume
that you are filtering for a file foo in this commit graph:

.-A---M---N---O---P---Q
/ / / / / /
I B C D E Y
\ / / / / /
`-------------' X

The horizontal line of history A---Q is taken to be the first parent
of each merge. The commits are:

+o I is the initial commit, in which foo exists with contents
"asdf", and a file quux exists with contents "quux". Initial
commits are compared to an empty tree, so I is !TREESAME.

+o In A, foo contains just "foo".

+o B contains the same change as A. Its merge M is trivial and hence
TREESAME to all parents.

+o C does not change foo, but its merge N changes it to "foobar", so
it is not TREESAME to any parent.

+o D sets foo to "baz". Its merge O combines the strings from N and
D to "foobarbaz"; i.e., it is not TREESAME to any parent.

+o E changes quux to "xyzzy", and its merge P combines the strings
to "quux xyzzy". P is TREESAME to O, but not to E.

+o X is an independent root commit that added a new file side, and Y
modified it. Y is TREESAME to X. Its merge Q added side to P,
and Q is TREESAME to P, but not to Y.

rev-list walks backwards through history, including or excluding
commits based on whether --full-history and/or parent rewriting (via
--parents or --children) are used. The following settings are
available.

Default mode
Commits are included if they are not TREESAME to any parent
(though this can be changed, see --sparse below). If the commit
was a merge, and it was TREESAME to one parent, follow only that
parent. (Even if there are several TREESAME parents, follow only
one of them.) Otherwise, follow all parents.

This results in:

.-A---N---O
/ / /
I---------D

Note how the rule to only follow the TREESAME parent, if one is
available, removed B from consideration entirely. C was
considered via N, but is TREESAME. Root commits are compared to
an empty tree, so I is !TREESAME.

Parent/child relations are only visible with --parents, but that
does not affect the commits selected in default mode, so we have
shown the parent lines.

--full-history without parent rewriting
This mode differs from the default in one point: always follow
all parents of a merge, even if it is TREESAME to one of them.
Even if more than one side of the merge has commits that are
included, this does not imply that the merge itself is! In the
example, we get

I A B N D O P Q

M was excluded because it is TREESAME to both parents. E, C and
B were all walked, but only B was !TREESAME, so the others do not
appear.

Note that without parent rewriting, it is not really possible to
talk about the parent/child relationships between the commits, so
we show them disconnected.

--full-history with parent rewriting
Ordinary commits are only included if they are !TREESAME (though
this can be changed, see --sparse below).

Merges are always included. However, their parent list is
rewritten: Along each parent, prune away commits that are not
included themselves. This results in

.-A---M---N---O---P---Q
/ / / / /
I B / D /
\ / / / /
`-------------'

Compare to --full-history without rewriting above. Note that E
was pruned away because it is TREESAME, but the parent list of P
was rewritten to contain E's parent I. The same happened for C
and N, and X, Y and Q.

In addition to the above settings, you can change whether TREESAME
affects inclusion:

--dense
Commits that are walked are included if they are not TREESAME to
any parent.

--sparse
All commits that are walked are included.

Note that without --full-history, this still simplifies merges:
if one of the parents is TREESAME, we follow only that one, so
the other sides of the merge are never walked.

--simplify-merges
First, build a history graph in the same way that --full-history
with parent rewriting does (see above).

Then simplify each commit C to its replacement C' in the final
history according to the following rules:

+o Set C' to C.

+o Replace each parent P of C' with its simplification P'. In
the process, drop parents that are ancestors of other parents
or that are root commits TREESAME to an empty tree, and
remove duplicates, but take care to never drop all parents
that we are TREESAME to.

+o If after this parent rewriting, C' is a root or merge commit
(has zero or >1 parents), a boundary commit, or !TREESAME, it
remains. Otherwise, it is replaced with its only parent.

The effect of this is best shown by way of comparing to
--full-history with parent rewriting. The example turns into:

.-A---M---N---O
/ / /
I B D
\ / /
`---------'

Note the major differences in N, P, and Q over --full-history:

+o N's parent list had I removed, because it is an ancestor of
the other parent M. Still, N remained because it is
!TREESAME.

+o P's parent list similarly had I removed. P was then removed
completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME.

+o Q's parent list had Y simplified to X. X was then removed,
because it was a TREESAME root. Q was then removed
completely, because it had one parent and is TREESAME.

There is another simplification mode available:

--ancestry-path[=<commit>]
Limit the displayed commits to those which are an ancestor of
<commit>, or which are a descendant of <commit>, or are <commit>
itself.

As an example use case, consider the following commit history:

D---E-------F
/ \ \
B---C---G---H---I---J
/ \
A-------K---------------L--M

A regular D..M computes the set of commits that are ancestors of
M, but excludes the ones that are ancestors of D. This is useful
to see what happened to the history leading to M since D, in the
sense that "what does M have that did not exist in D". The result
in this example would be all the commits, except A and B (and D
itself, of course).

When we want to find out what commits in M are contaminated with
the bug introduced by D and need fixing, however, we might want
to view only the subset of D..M that are actually descendants of
D, i.e. excluding C and K. This is exactly what the
--ancestry-path option does. Applied to the D..M range, it
results in:

E-------F
\ \
G---H---I---J
\
L--M

We can also use --ancestry-path=D instead of --ancestry-path
which means the same thing when applied to the D..M range but is
just more explicit.

If we instead are interested in a given topic within this range,
and all commits affected by that topic, we may only want to view
the subset of D..M which contain that topic in their ancestry
path. So, using --ancestry-path=H D..M for example would result
in:

E
\
G---H---I---J
\
L--M

Whereas --ancestry-path=K D..M would result in

K---------------L--M

Before discussing another option, --show-pulls, we need to create a
new example history.

A common problem users face when looking at simplified history is
that a commit they know changed a file somehow does not appear in the
file's simplified history. Let's demonstrate a new example and show
how options such as --full-history and --simplify-merges works in
that case:

.-A---M-----C--N---O---P
/ / \ \ \/ / /
I B \ R-'`-Z' /
\ / \/ /
\ / /\ /
`---X--' `---Y--'

For this example, suppose I created file.txt which was modified by A,
B, and X in different ways. The single-parent commits C, Z, and Y do
not change file.txt. The merge commit M was created by resolving the
merge conflict to include both changes from A and B and hence is not
TREESAME to either. The merge commit R, however, was created by
ignoring the contents of file.txt at M and taking only the contents
of file.txt at X. Hence, R is TREESAME to X but not M. Finally, the
natural merge resolution to create N is to take the contents of
file.txt at R, so N is TREESAME to R but not C. The merge commits O
and P are TREESAME to their first parents, but not to their second
parents, Z and Y respectively.

When using the default mode, N and R both have a TREESAME parent, so
those edges are walked and the others are ignored. The resulting
history graph is:

I---X

When using --full-history, Git walks every edge. This will discover
the commits A and B and the merge M, but also will reveal the merge
commits O and P. With parent rewriting, the resulting graph is:

.-A---M--------N---O---P
/ / \ \ \/ / /
I B \ R-'`--' /
\ / \/ /
\ / /\ /
`---X--' `------'

Here, the merge commits O and P contribute extra noise, as they did
not actually contribute a change to file.txt. They only merged a
topic that was based on an older version of file.txt. This is a
common issue in repositories using a workflow where many contributors
work in parallel and merge their topic branches along a single trunk:
many unrelated merges appear in the --full-history results.

When using the --simplify-merges option, the commits O and P
disappear from the results. This is because the rewritten second
parents of O and P are reachable from their first parents. Those
edges are removed and then the commits look like single-parent
commits that are TREESAME to their parent. This also happens to the
commit N, resulting in a history view as follows:

.-A---M--.
/ / \
I B R
\ / /
\ / /
`---X--'

In this view, we see all of the important single-parent changes from
A, B, and X. We also see the carefully-resolved merge M and the
not-so-carefully-resolved merge R. This is usually enough information
to determine why the commits A and B "disappeared" from history in
the default view. However, there are a few issues with this approach.

The first issue is performance. Unlike any previous option, the
--simplify-merges option requires walking the entire commit history
before returning a single result. This can make the option difficult
to use for very large repositories.

The second issue is one of auditing. When many contributors are
working on the same repository, it is important which merge commits
introduced a change into an important branch. The problematic merge R
above is not likely to be the merge commit that was used to merge
into an important branch. Instead, the merge N was used to merge R
and X into the important branch. This commit may have information
about why the change X came to override the changes from A and B in
its commit message.

--show-pulls
In addition to the commits shown in the default history, show
each merge commit that is not TREESAME to its first parent but is
TREESAME to a later parent.

When a merge commit is included by --show-pulls, the merge is
treated as if it "pulled" the change from another branch. When
using --show-pulls on this example (and no other options) the
resulting graph is:

I---X---R---N

Here, the merge commits R and N are included because they pulled
the commits X and R into the base branch, respectively. These
merges are the reason the commits A and B do not appear in the
default history.

When --show-pulls is paired with --simplify-merges, the graph
includes all of the necessary information:

.-A---M--. N
/ / \ /
I B R
\ / /
\ / /
`---X--'

Notice that since M is reachable from R, the edge from N to M was
simplified away. However, N still appears in the history as an
important commit because it "pulled" the change R into the main
branch.

The --simplify-by-decoration option allows you to view only the big
picture of the topology of the history, by omitting commits that are
not referenced by tags. Commits are marked as !TREESAME (in other
words, kept after history simplification rules described above) if
(1) they are referenced by tags, or (2) they change the contents of
the paths given on the command line. All other commits are marked as
TREESAME (subject to be simplified away).

MAPPING AUTHORS

See gitmailmap(5).

Note that if git shortlog is run outside of a repository (to process
log contents on standard input), it will look for a .mailmap file in
the current directory.

GIT

Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.48.1 2025-01-13 GIT-SHORTLOG(1)