How to get sha of current git commit from R

Question

Is there a way to get SHA of current GIT commit from R? I need to access it via a function call (not as a hard string).

I have adapted GIT as version control system for analysis, and want to print the SHA on footnote of my intermediate reports (my working drafts, in pdf format, get a life of their own and it is not immediately obvious by looking at them at what moment they were generated; this creates a reproducibility issue).

For reference: I am using R 3.4.1 via R Studio and creating reports via r markdown.

score 12 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 23 '17 at 10:52

12

You'll need to invoke the git rev-parse command as explained here: How to retrieve the hash for the current commit in Git?

You can do it using system():

https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/base/html/system.html

Putting it together:

system("git rev-parse HEAD", intern=TRUE)

edited Sep 23 '17 at 10:52

Spacedman

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answered Sep 23 '17 at 07:06

John Zwinck

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Spacedman · Answer 2 · 2022-01-26T18:26:39.547

9

Install git2r package and then:

> library(git2r)
> r = revparse_single(path,"HEAD")
> sha(r)
[1] "f5bb1f115e9db0c732840298465488e8dfea5032"

It also gives you some other info about the commit too, in other members of the returned object:

> r$author
name:  Barry Rowlingson
email: b.rowlingson@lancs.ac.uk
when:  2022-01-12 18:37:14 GMT

These are documented in help(commit), but only sha seems to have an accessor function for it.

edited Jan 26 '22 at 18:26

answered Sep 23 '17 at 08:27

Spacedman

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Thanks for pointing out an interesting package; it is a bit of an overkill for the task I had in mind, but it could come handy in the future. – Jindra Lacko Sep 24 '17 at 08:43
I think it might now be `r$sha` instead of `r@sha`, as `r` is "not an S4 object". – shabbychef Jan 26 '22 at 16:21
2

@shabbychef thanks, the NEWS file tells me it switched to S3 in 2018! I've edited. – Spacedman Jan 26 '22 at 18:27

How to get sha of current git commit from R

2 Answers2