I need a plumbing command to print the commit message of one given commit - nothing more, nothing less.
8 Answers
It's not "plumbing", but it'll do exactly what you want (%B represents the whole commit message):
$ git log --format=%B -n 1 <commit>
If you absolutely need a "plumbing" command (not sure why that's a requirement), you can use rev-list:
$ git rev-list --format=%B --max-count=1 <commit>
Although rev-list will also print out the commit sha (on the first line) in addition to the commit message.
9 Comments
mipadi
%B is a correct specifier (at least, in Git 1.7.2, not sure when it was added).mipadi
%B was added sometime after 1.7.1 (probably in 1.7.1.1).
Mark Probst
Indeed it is - Git 1.7.2 apparently. Muchas gracias!
gilad905
I prefer
%s instead of %B because it prints only the commit message subject, not the body (expanded description) if one is supplied
CervEd
@AndrewSpencer, no extensive testing but
git log appears slower |
git show is more a plumbing command than git log, and has the same formatting options:
git show -s --format=%B SHA1
8 Comments
ntc2
And if you just want the first line ("subject"), use
%s instead of %B.
Rich
(I prefer this to the accepted "log" or "rev-list" answer, as it's a single-commit operation, rather than a list restricted to 1 entry.)
CervEd
@Rich what do you mean by that?
Rich
@CervEd - I mean that the "log" and "rev-list" commands operate on lists of commits, and the other answers here restrict the list to length 1. It's an unnecessary level of indirection and complicates things. The "log" op in git is kind of like doing "
let xs = [123]; for (x in xs) { show(x) }", but it's simpler and quicker to just do show(123).CervEd
I think you're making the assumption that because
rev-list has a max-count option and show doesn't that rev-list is iterating over the whole tree or doing something computationally intensive. But you can't make such assumptions on the internal workings based on the public API. git show is a porcelain command, without having dug deep, I'm assuming it's using the exact same mechanics as rev-list as well as a whole bunch of other user-friendly operations that slow it down. Porcelain commands are not optimized for speed |
Not plumbing, but I have these in my .gitconfig:
lsum = log -n 1 --pretty=format:'%s'
lmsg = log -n 1 --pretty=format:'%s%n%n%b'
That's "last summary" and "last message". You can provide a commit to get the summary or message of that commit. (I'm using 1.7.0.5 so don't have %B.)
1 Comment
kuklei
You can pass -n argument as a parameter. So instead of only return last commit you can make it to return last 5 commits. Here the change necessary lsum = "!f() { git log -n $1 --pretty=format:'%s'; }; f" lmsg = "!f() { git log -n $1 --pretty=format:'%s%n%n%b'; }; f" Found it here stackoverflow.com/questions/7005513/… You just run this git lsum 5
This will give you a very compact list of all messages for any specified time.
git log --since=1/11/2011 --until=28/11/2011 --no-merges --format=%B > CHANGELOG.TXT
Comments
I started to use
git show-branch --no-name <hash>
It seems to be faster than
git show -s --format=%s <hash>
Both give the same result
I actually wrote a small tool to see the status of all my repos. You can find it on github.
1 Comment
Canonical Chris
That shows the first line only (%s), not the whole commit message ("nothing more, nothing less", as the asker wrote). If you have a way of doing show-branch with %B, then that would be helpful.
Print commit message using git-rev-list
git-rev-list is the plumbing command that let's you print the message of a commit.
Use it like this.
git rev-list --max-count=1 --no-commit-header --format=%B <commit>
--max-count=1: we're just interested in one commit--no-commit-header: Don't show the default commit header--format=%B: show message (subject%s+%n%n+ body%b)<commit>: asha,HEAD,branch-name,tag-name,branch1...branch2etc.
It's a lot faster than git log or git show.
3 Comments
Leponzo
This won't work for merge commits though that have two parents: you'll have to use
tail +3.CervEd
@leponzo, bummer. Maybe it's better to use some kind of sed magic to get rid of the shas reliably
T.D
newer versions of git (2.33+) have added a
--no-commit-header option to rev-list. If you need use sed, you can use sed '/^commit [0-9a-f]\{40\}$/d' (stackoverflow.com/a/68514358/10807837)I use shortlog for this:
$ git shortlog master..
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Bump to 1.3.8
Comments
To Get my Last Commit Message alone in git
git log --format=%B -n 1 $(git log -1 --pretty=format:"%h") | cat -
git show -s --oneline <commit>Plumbing and Porcelain This book covers primarily how to use Git with 30 or so subcommands such as checkout, branch, remote, and so on. But because Git was initially a toolkit for a version control system rather than a full user-friendly VCS, it has a number of subcommands that do low-level work and were designed to be chained together UNIX-style or called from scripts. These commands are generally referred to as Git’s “plumbing” commands, while the more user-friendly commands are called “porcelain” commands.