git ls-files sort by modification time

Question

How can I list files sorted by their modification time?

I want the git modification time, not the system modification time. For example, if I have a (committed) file README, then

touch README

will change the system modification time... but the git status would remain unchanged.

If I try

git ls-files -z | xargs -0 ls  -t

this will sort by the system modification time.

Is there any option to git ls-files that would list files sorted by their git modification time?

score 32 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 02 '15 at 14:36

Is there any option to git ls-files that would list files sorted by their git modification time?

I don't think so. One possible way would be to iterate over the files, get the timestamp using git log, and sort the output.

The following might work for you:

while read file; do echo $(git log --pretty=format:%ad -n 1 --date=raw -- $file) $file; done < <(git ls-tree -r --name-only HEAD) | sort -k1,1n

score 14 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 12 '20 at 19:44

14

Best answer is by Mikko Rantalainen on serverfault:

git ls-tree -r --name-only HEAD -z | TZ=UTC xargs -0n1 -I_ git --no-pager log -1 --date=iso-local --format="%ad _" -- _ | sort

answered Sep 12 '20 at 19:44

Jonathan Ben-Avraham

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This is best because it (a) shows human-readable timestamps, unlike devnull 's answer above and (b) shows the timestamps in general, and also more than just the most recent, unlike datinc 's and thill 's answers above. – ijoseph Feb 19 '21 at 18:52
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To support cases where files are renamed in git, use this for the xargs bit: `xargs -0n1 -I_ sh -c 'git --no-pager log --follow --date=iso-local --format="%ad _" -- _ | tail -1'` – Connor Clark Apr 19 '23 at 20:43

score 7 · Answer 3 · edited Jan 24 '22 at 17:09

7

Easiest and fastest is probably

git diff-index      --name-only --diff-filter=A @
git log --pretty='' --name-only | awk '!seen[$0]++'

git diff-index ... lists all your newly-tracked files first, then git log ... lists all files in history most-recently-touched first (| awk ... removes duplicates). It'll still list historical files that have been deleted in the current checkout, but it hardly seems worth the complexity to weed those out.

edited Jan 24 '22 at 17:09

rob74

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answered Feb 13 '19 at 18:50

jthill

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`git log --pretty='' --name-only | awk '!seen[$0]++'` is definitely the fastest, but unfortunately it's missing the very useful context of the modification timestamps. – ijoseph Feb 19 '21 at 18:56
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@ijoseph `git log --first-parent --pretty=%cd --name-status | awk 'NF==1{date=$1}NF>1 && !seen[$2]++{print date,$0}' FS=$'\t'` – jthill Apr 04 '21 at 04:20
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Are you a wizard? Amazing. – ijoseph Apr 04 '21 at 06:59
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@ijoseph nahhh, that's bread'n'butter stuff. – jthill Apr 04 '21 at 15:13

score 6 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 10 '16 at 19:12

6

I was able to sort files in a folder by using the following command

git ls-files -z -- "${dir}" | xargs -0 -n1 -I{} -- git log -1 --format="%at {}" {} | sort | tail -n1 | cut -d " " -f2-

answered Nov 10 '16 at 19:12

datinc

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I needed to sort by creation time, so modified it like this and I think it worked: `git ls-files -z -- "${dir}" | xargs -0 -n1 -I{} -- sh -c 'git log -1 --format="%at {}" {} | tail -1' | sort | cut -d " " -f2-` – haridsv Dec 11 '19 at 07:39
Running that command on Mac, I get `fatal: empty string is not a valid pathspec. please use . instead if you meant to match all paths` – Matt Fletcher May 13 '21 at 10:20

score 3 · Answer 5 · edited Nov 03 '20 at 17:59

3

This won't show ALL files, but it does give you a quick idea on what changed in the order your looking for:

git log --name-only

edited Nov 03 '20 at 17:59

Elletlar

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answered Nov 03 '20 at 17:43

Ronald Petty

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git ls-files sort by modification time

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