see history of region in git

Question

I wonder is there any way to see the history of a region in git, i.e. all the commits that touched some pieces of code (defined as several contiguous lines of code)? I think this is kind of cool.

I am using magit, so any suggestions on how to use magit to achieve this goal would be even better.

In command line at least: http://stackoverflow.com/a/7310999/6309 — VonC, May 27 '14 at 05:53

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered May 27 '14 at 05:36

3

A first simple solution is git log -- file1 file2 dir1: it will only show the commit which touched those files / directories.

Another approach would be using git gui blame <commit> file Here each line of file will be annotated with the sha1 which introduced it, and you can click those sha1 to navigate among commits.

answered May 27 '14 at 05:36

gturri

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Thanks @gturri. `git gui blame` is the tool I am looking for. `magit-blame-mode` provides a way to check the last revision modifying the region in emacs. – chtlp May 27 '14 at 15:53

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 19 '15 at 23:29

You probably want git-log -L

 -L <start>,<end>:<file>, -L :<regex>:<file>
     Trace the evolution of the line range given by "<start>,<end>" (or the
     funcname regex <regex>) 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. You can
     specify this option more than once.

     <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 '`:<regex>'' is given in place of <start> and <end>, it denotes the range
     from the first funcname line that matches <regex>, up to the next funcname
     line. `:<regex>'' searches from the end of the previous `-L range, if any,
     otherwise from the start of file. "^:<regex>" searches from the start of file.

For magit specifically, there's no current support, but there is an relevant open issue: https://github.com/magit/magit/issues/1717

see history of region in git

2 Answers2