How to display metadata about single commit in git?

Question

I'd like to parse meta information from git repository. I'd like to fetch a single information for a commit, as in

git log --pretty=format:%an HEAD^..HEAD

Problem is, this is not working for the first commit in repository.

git show --pretty=format:%an HEAD^..HEAD

is also close to what I want, except I'm not interested in parsing actual diff.

Any idea how to make git log work for the first commit or how to disable git show from showing commit content?

Or, is there any better way how to retrieve metadata about given commit?

score 91 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 01 '09 at 19:19

91

Supply the quiet option to show to suppress the diff.

git show --quiet HEAD

So for your example, author name:

git show --quiet --pretty=format:%an

answered Dec 01 '09 at 19:19

CB Bailey

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In git version 1.7.11.msysgit.0, `--quiet` is simply ignored. Here, `-s` works well – koppor Jul 18 '12 at 20:31
`--quiet` is not documented in the man page, so probably deprecated in favor of `-s`. – phil294 May 18 '22 at 17:02

koppor · Answer 2 · 2020-06-16T22:02:14.530

15

git --no-pager show -s --format='%an <%ae>' COMMIT

--no-pager supresses the pager
-s suppresses diff output; short for --no-patch
%an is the author name
%ae is the author email

(Taken from quora.com)

edited Jun 16 '20 at 22:02

answered Jul 18 '12 at 20:39

koppor

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At least `git show -s` [is documented](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-show#git-show--s). It's short for `--no-patch`, and as the manual says, it suppresses the diff output. – Fabio says Reinstate Monica Nov 12 '18 at 11:26

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 24 '18 at 15:56

git log -n 1 --format='%an'

-n 1 restricts the log to a single commit.

Does the same as git show --quiet, although I prefer it a bit since it is documented on man git-log while --quiet is not documented on man git-show as of 2.17.

Also note that you can golf even better with show with the short form of --quiet:

git show -q --format='%an'

How to display metadata about single commit in git?

3 Answers3