I'm trying to find a command to get the last modified date of a file in a local git repo.
I have created the repo and done one commit. I only had to edit one file and will commit it, but I was wondering what the last modification data of the file in the repo is (not the commit date).
I only have the command line, and git log ./path/to/filename.php only gives me the commit date
The correct way to do this is to use git log as follows.
git log -1 --pretty="format:%ci" /path/to/repo/anyfile.any
-1 restricts it to the very last time the file changed
%ci is just one of the date formats you can choose from others here at https://git-scm.com/docs/pretty-formats
MitchellK's answer exactly fit my needs, setting my local files' last written times to what's in git. Here's a little C# LinqPad script to automate the process:
var root = new DirectoryInfo(@"C:\gitlab\mydirectory\");
Directory.SetCurrentDirectory(root.FullName); // Give git some context
var files = root.GetFiles("*.*", SearchOption.AllDirectories);
foreach (var file in files)
{
var results = Util.Cmd("git",
$"log -1 --pretty=\"format:%ci\" \"{file.FullName}\"",
true);
var lastUpdatedString = results.FirstOrDefault();
if (lastUpdatedString == null)
{
Console.WriteLine($"{file.FullName} did not have a last updated date!!");
continue;
}
var dt = DateTimeOffset.Parse(lastUpdatedString);
if (file.LastWriteTimeUtc != dt.UtcDateTime)
{
Console.WriteLine($"{file.FullName}, {file.LastWriteTimeUtc} => {dt.UtcDateTime}");
file.LastWriteTimeUtc = dt.UtcDateTime;
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine($"{file.FullName} already updated.");
}
}
Get the last modified timestamp
git log -1 --pretty="format:%ct" /path/to/repo/anyfile.any)
The crux of the question, though, is do you want to see the file's last modification timestamp, or do you want to change the file's timestamp to what you think it should be (eg, the last modified time)? From the question, the OP seems to wish to see the file's timestamp, not necessarily manipulate it.
TL;DR: Just run this, and git ls will show you last modified for all files in the pwd. NOTE: The $' is part of the command, so copy the whole line
$'!cd -- ${GIT_PREFIX:-.};\nfor i in *; \ndo \n ls -ld $i | awk \'BEGIN { ORS="";} {print $1, $2, $3, $4; printf("%7s ",$5)}\'; \n gd=$(git log -1 --date=local --format="%ad" -- "$i"); \n [ -z "$gd" ] && gd=$(ls -ld "$i" | awk \'{print $6, $7, $8}\'); \n if [ $(date -d "$gd" +%s) -le $(date -d "6 months ago" +%s) ] ; \n then dfmt=\'%b %_d %Y\'; \n else dfmt=\'%b %_d %H:%M\'; \n fi; \n echo -n "$(date -d "$gd" +"$dfmt") "; \n ls -d --color=always "$i"; \ndone'
For me, I just want to see the last modified date, not go mucking around with actual timestamps on the filesystem.
So, I bothered to write a bash script that gives me an ls-style output that displays the git repo's last modified date (ie, the author's timestamp) instead of the timestamp on disk. It's a rather rough cut, but it works the way I want it to.
cd -- ${GIT_PREFIX:-.};
for i in *;
do
ls -ld $i | awk 'BEGIN { ORS="";} {print $1, $2, $3, $4; printf("%7s ",$5)}';
gd=$(git log -1 --date=local --format="%ad" -- "$i");
[ -z "$gd" ] && gd=$(ls -ld "$i" | awk '{print $6, $7, $8}');
if [ $(date -d "$gd" +%s) -le $(date -d "6 months ago" +%s) ] ;
then dfmt='%b %_d %Y';
else dfmt='%b %_d %H:%M';
fi;
echo -n "$(date -d "$gd" +"$dfmt") ";
ls -d --color=always "$i";
done
Save this file as, eg, your ~/scripts/git-ls. Assuming that's the path you use, then import in into your git config with
echo "git config --global alias.ls $(printf '%q' "`echo -n \!; cat ~/scripts/git-ls`")" | bash -
It builds the git config command, and then hands it off to a bash sub-shell to execute it.
Pros:
ls outputgit help ls still shows the definition as a readable scriptCons:
git ls or just plain lsgrepls
Git doesn't record the last modification date, only the commit/author dates for a all commit (which can include more than one file).
You would need to run a script in order to amend a commit with the last modification date of a particular file (not very useful if said commit has more than one file in it).
See an example at "Git: Change timestamp after pushing".
Another option would be to record those timestamp in a separate file, and amend your commit that way: see "What's the equivalent of use-commit-times for git?".
That includes:
mtimestore- core script providing 3 options:
-a(save all - for initialization in already existing repo (works with git-versed files)),-s(to save staged changes), and-rto restore them.- pre-commit hook
- post-checkout hook
Incidentally, this is the post where I explained 5 years ago why Git doesn't record timestamps.
Here's a version of Randall's answer that works for me on macOS 12.4 using zsh:
for i in *;
do
ls -ld $i | awk 'BEGIN { ORS="";} {print $1, $2, $3, $4; printf("%7s ",$5)}';
gd=$(git log -1 --date=local --format="%ad" -- "$i");
if [ -z "$gd" ] ;
then printf " --------------------------- $i\n";
else
dfmt="%a %b %d %T %Y";
printf "$(date -j -f "$dfmt" "$gd" "%+%Y") ";
ls -d --color=always "$i";
fi;
done
Most of the differences are in the date commands, which seem to be different on Mac. And I also chose to print out dashes if the file has no date associated with it in git (I felt that was less confusing than using the local file system's date).
As Randall mentioned, you can easily add a git alias for this by saving this to a file like ~/scripts/git-ls and then running:
echo "git config --global alias.ls $(printf '%q' "`echo -n \!; cat ~/scripts/git-ls`")" | bash -
