GITK(1) Git Manual GITK(1)

NAME

gitk - The Git repository browser

SYNOPSIS

gitk [<options>] [<revision-range>] [--] [<path>...]

DESCRIPTION

Displays changes in a repository or a selected set of commits. This
includes visualizing the commit graph, showing information related to
each commit, and the files in the trees of each revision.

OPTIONS

To control which revisions to show, gitk supports most options
applicable to the git rev-list command. It also supports a few
options applicable to the git diff-* commands to control how the
changes each commit introduces are shown. Finally, it supports some
gitk-specific options.

gitk generally only understands options with arguments in the stuck
form (see gitcli(7)) due to limitations in the command-line parser.

rev-list options and arguments
This manual page describes only the most frequently used options. See
git-rev-list(1) for a complete list.

--all
Show all refs (branches, tags, etc.).

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

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

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

--date-order
Sort commits by date when possible.

--merge
After an attempt to merge stops with conflicts, show the commits
on the history between two branches (i.e. the HEAD and the
MERGE_HEAD) that modify the conflicted files and do not exist on
all the heads being merged.

--left-right
Mark which side of a symmetric difference a commit is reachable
from. Commits from the left side are prefixed with a < symbol and
those from the right with a > symbol.

--full-history
When filtering history with <path>..., does not prune some
history. (See "History simplification" in git-log(1) for a more
detailed explanation.)

--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. (See "History simplification"
in git-log(1) for a more detailed explanation.)

--ancestry-path
When given a range of commits to display (e.g. commit1..commit2
or commit2 ^commit1), only display commits that exist directly on
the ancestry chain between the commit1 and commit2, i.e. commits
that are both descendants of commit1, and ancestors of commit2.
(See "History simplification" in git-log(1) for a more detailed
explanation.)

-L<start>,<end>:<file>, -L:<funcname>:<file>
Trace the evolution of the line range given by <start>,<end>, or
by the function name regex <funcname>, within the <file>. You may
not give any pathspec limiters. This is currently limited to a
walk starting from a single revision, i.e., you may only give
zero or one positive revision arguments, and <start> and <end>
(or <funcname>) must exist in the starting revision. You can
specify this option more than once. Implies --patch. Patch output
can be suppressed using --no-patch, but other diff formats
(namely --raw, --numstat, --shortstat, --dirstat, --summary,
--name-only, --name-status, --check) are not currently
implemented.

<start> and <end> can take one of these forms:

+o number

If <start> or <end> is a number, it specifies an absolute
line number (lines count from 1).

+o /regex/

This form will use the first line matching the given POSIX
regex. If <start> is a regex, it will search from the end of
the previous -L range, if any, otherwise from the start of
file. If <start> is ^/regex/, it will search from the start
of file. If <end> is a regex, it will search starting at the
line given by <start>.

+o +offset or -offset

This is only valid for <end> and will specify a number of
lines before or after the line given by <start>.

If :<funcname> is given in place of <start> and <end>, it is a
regular expression that denotes the range from the first funcname
line that matches <funcname>, up to the next funcname line.
:<funcname> searches from the end of the previous -L range, if
any, otherwise from the start of file. ^:<funcname> searches
from the start of file. The function names are determined in the
same way as git diff works out patch hunk headers (see Defining a
custom hunk-header in gitattributes(5)).

<revision range>
Limit the revisions to show. This can be either a single revision
meaning show from the given revision and back, or it can be a
range in the form "<from>..<to>" to show all revisions between
<from> and back to <to>. Note, more advanced revision selection
can be applied. For a more complete list of ways to spell object
names, see gitrevisions(7).

<path>...
Limit commits to the ones touching files in the given paths.
Note, to avoid ambiguity with respect to revision names use "--"
to separate the paths from any preceding options.

gitk-specific options
--argscmd=<command>
Command to be run each time gitk has to determine the revision
range to show. The command is expected to print on its standard
output a list of additional revisions to be shown, one per line.
Use this instead of explicitly specifying a <revision-range> if
the set of commits to show may vary between refreshes.

--select-commit=<ref>
Select the specified commit after loading the graph. Default
behavior is equivalent to specifying --select-commit=HEAD.

EXAMPLES

gitk v2.6.12.. include/scsi drivers/scsi
Show the changes since version v2.6.12 that changed any file in
the include/scsi or drivers/scsi subdirectories

gitk --since="2 weeks ago" -- gitk
Show the changes during the last two weeks to the file gitk. The
"--" is necessary to avoid confusion with the branch named gitk

gitk --max-count=100 --all -- Makefile
Show at most 100 changes made to the file Makefile. Instead of
only looking for changes in the current branch look in all
branches.

FILES

User configuration and preferences are stored at:

+o $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/gitk if it exists, otherwise

+o $HOME/.gitk if it exists

If neither of the above exist then $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/gitk is
created and used by default. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set it
defaults to $HOME/.config in all cases.

HISTORY

Gitk was the first graphical repository browser. It's written in
tcl/tk.

gitk is actually maintained as an independent project, but stable
versions are distributed as part of the Git suite for the convenience
of end users.

gitk-git/ comes from Paul Mackerras's gitk project:

git://ozlabs.org/~paulus/gitk

SEE ALSO

qgit(1)
A repository browser written in C++ using Qt.

tig(1)
A minimal repository browser and Git tool output highlighter
written in C using Ncurses.

GIT

Part of the git(1) suite

Git 2.48.1 2025-01-13 GITK(1)