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Other than parsing git log for the date string, is there a Git native way to report the date of a certain commit?

Samer Buna
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7 Answers7

397

The show command may be what you want. Try

git show -s --format=%ci <commit>

Other formats for the date string are available as well. Check the manual page for details.

srobinson
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Tim Henigan
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    To get the commit without its diff, use `log -1` instead of `show`. – Josh Lee Sep 28 '10 at 16:42
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    Or add the '-s' to the command: `git show -s --format="%ci" ` – aprock Sep 28 '10 at 17:38
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    For future users: you can view the *author date* with `%ai`. – user541686 Jan 12 '15 at 02:27
  • @Mehrdad I'm looking to accomplish this with all the files in a `repo git ls-tree -r --name-only HEAD` sent through a loop doesn't give me a specific date-time. – DBS Apr 21 '16 at 22:02
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    to get just unix timestamp: use git show -s --format=%ct – xiaoweiz Oct 20 '16 at 13:37
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    If you want another date format, you can use `git show -s --format=%cd --date=short ` (will give e.g. 2016-11-02) or `git show -s --format=%cd --date=short ` or `git show -s --format=%cd --date=format:%Y ` (this example will print only the year) For details see [this answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/19742762/935676). – amoebe Nov 02 '16 at 15:53
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    It is _significantly_ faster to use `log -1` rather than `show -s` for large merge commits so I definitely recommend using `log -1` if you are trying to find stale branches. This sped it up from hours to minutes in the case of the monorepo I'm working with right now. – marczych Jul 25 '18 at 01:54
  • `git show -s --format=%ci` is what I wanted (for most recent commit) – Ryan Feb 06 '20 at 17:20
  • The `git show -s` variant will sometimes output some extra information beyond the date (`Tagger: someone` and some log message), I don’t know if this is a bug in GIT or some intended behaviour, but `git log -1` does not do this. – roeland Jul 06 '22 at 23:49
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If you want to see only the date of a tag you'd do:

git show -s --format=%ci <mytagname>^{commit}

which gives: 2013-11-06 13:22:37 +0100

Or do:

git show -s --format=%ct <mytagname>^{commit}

which gives UNIX timestamp: 1383740557

Marcus Philip
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  • This seems to give the date of the commit a tag points to, not the date of the tag its self. – hoijui Oct 22 '21 at 06:20
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If you like to have the timestamp without the timezone but local timezone do 

git log -1 --format=%cd --date=local

Which gives this depending on your location

Mon Sep 28 12:07:37 2015
schoetbi
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10

In case that you want to format the date (or hour) by yourself:

git show -s --date=format:'%Y%m%d-%H%M' --format=%cd  <commit id | default is the last commit>

# example output:
20210712-1948
dsaydon
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7

You can use the git show command.

To get the last commit date from git repository in a long(Unix epoch timestamp):

  • Command: git show -s --format=%ct
  • Result: 1605103148

Note: You can visit the git-show documentation to get a more detailed description of the options.

Keshav Lodhi
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if you got troubles with windows cmd command and .bat just escape percents like that

git show -s --format=%%ct

The % character has a special meaning for command line parameters and FOR parameters. To treat a percent as a regular character, double it: %%

Syntax : Escape Characters, Delimiters and Quotes

Andrey Tikhonov
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I know the question was asked a long time ago and I don't know which version of git this was.

For git version 2.37.3 the command

git show -s

will show the author date, not the commit date. To get the commit date of a commit use

git log -1 --format=fuller 'commit hash'
Jesper Hallborg
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