How to have 'git log' show filenames like 'svn log -v'

SVN's log has a "-v" mode that outputs filenames of files changed in each commit, like so:

jes5199$ svn log -v ------------------------------------------------------------------------ r1 | jes5199 | 2007-01-03 14:39:41 -0800 (Wed, 03 Jan 2007) | 1 line Changed paths: A /AUTHORS A /COPYING A /ChangeLog A /EVOLUTION A /INSTALL A /MacOSX 

Is there a quick way to get a list of changed files in each commit in Git?

13 Answers

For full path names of changed files:

git log --name-only 

For full path names and status of changed files:

git log --name-status 

For abbreviated pathnames and a diffstat of changed files:

git log --stat 

There are a lot more options. Check out the documentation.

NOTE: git whatchanged is deprecated, use git log instead

New users are encouraged to use git-log[1] instead. The whatchanged command is essentially the same as git-log[1] but defaults to show the raw format diff output and to skip merges.

The command is kept primarily for historical reasons; fingers of many people who learned Git long before git log was invented by reading Linux kernel mailing list are trained to type it.

You can use the command git whatchanged --stat to get a list of files that changed in each commit (along with the commit message).

References

git show is also a great command.

It's kind of like svn diff, but you can pass it a git commit hash and see that diff.

If you want to get the file names only without the rest of the commit message you can use:

git log --name-only --pretty=format: <branch name> 

This can then be extended to use the various options that contain the file name:

git log --name-status --pretty=format: <branch name> git log --stat --pretty=format: <branch name> 

One thing to note when using this method is that there are some blank lines in the output that will have to be ignored. Using this can be useful if you'd like to see the files that have been changed on a local branch, but is not yet pushed to a remote branch and there is no guarantee the latest from the remote has already been pulled in. For example:

git log --name-only --pretty=format: my_local_branch --not origin/master 

Would show all the files that have been changed on the local branch, but not yet merged to the master branch on the remote.

I use this on a daily basis to show history with files that changed:

git log --stat --pretty=short --graph 

To keep it short, add an alias in your .gitconfig by doing:

git config --global alias.ls 'log --stat --pretty=short --graph' 

I use this:

git log --name-status <branch>..<branch> | grep -E '^[A-Z]\b' | sort | uniq 

which outputs a list of files only and their state (added, modified, deleted):

A sites/api/branding/__init__.py M sites/api/branding/wtv/mod.py ... 

This short command is very helpful to list all the files changed per commit.

git log --name-only --oneline 

--name-only

Show only names of changed files. The file names are often encoded in UTF-8. For more information see the discussion about encoding in the git-log1 manual page.

--oneline

This is a shorthand for "--pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit" used together. 

Output

git diff --stat HEAD^! shows changed files and added/removed line counts for the last commit (HEAD).

It seems to me that there isn't any single command to get concise output consisting only of filenames and added and removed line counts for several commits at once, so I created my own Bash script for that:

#!/bin/bash for ((i=0; i<=$1; i++)) do sha1=`git log -1 --skip=$i --pretty=format:%H` echo "HEAD~$i $sha1" git diff --stat HEAD~$(($i+1)) HEAD~$i done 

It is to be called, for example, ./changed_files 99 to get the changes in a concise form from HEAD to HEAD~99. It can be piped, for example, to less.

A summary of answers with example output

This is using a local repository with five simple commits.

‣ git log --name-only commit ed080bc88b7bf0c5125e093a26549f3755f7ae74 (HEAD -> master) Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:46:04 2019 -0700 mv file4 to file5 file5 commit 5c4e8cfbe3554fe3d7d99b5ae4ba381fa1cdb328 Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:36:32 2019 -0700 foo file1 really important to foo before the bar file1 commit 1b6413400b5a6a96d062a7c13109e6325e081c85 Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:34:37 2019 -0700 foobar file2, rm file3 file2 file3 commit e0dd02ce23977c782987a206236da5ab784543cc Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:33:05 2019 -0700 Add file4 file4 commit b58e85692f711d402bae4ca606d3d2262bb76cf1 Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:32:41 2019 -0700 Added files file1 file2 file3 

‣ git log --name-status commit ed080bc88b7bf0c5125e093a26549f3755f7ae74 (HEAD -> master) Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:46:04 2019 -0700 mv file4 to file5 R100 file4 file5 commit 5c4e8cfbe3554fe3d7d99b5ae4ba381fa1cdb328 Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:36:32 2019 -0700 foo file1 really important to foo before the bar M file1 commit 1b6413400b5a6a96d062a7c13109e6325e081c85 Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:34:37 2019 -0700 foobar file2, rm file3 M file2 D file3 commit e0dd02ce23977c782987a206236da5ab784543cc Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:33:05 2019 -0700 Add file4 A file4 commit b58e85692f711d402bae4ca606d3d2262bb76cf1 Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:32:41 2019 -0700 Added files A file1 A file2 A file3 

‣ git log --stat commit ed080bc88b7bf0c5125e093a26549f3755f7ae74 (HEAD -> master) Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:46:04 2019 -0700 mv file4 to file5 file4 => file5 | 0 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) commit 5c4e8cfbe3554fe3d7d99b5ae4ba381fa1cdb328 Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:36:32 2019 -0700 foo file1 really important to foo before the bar file1 | 3 +++ 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+) commit 1b6413400b5a6a96d062a7c13109e6325e081c85 Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:34:37 2019 -0700 foobar file2, rm file3 file2 | 1 + file3 | 0 2 files changed, 1 insertion(+) commit e0dd02ce23977c782987a206236da5ab784543cc Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:33:05 2019 -0700 Add file4 file4 | 0 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) commit b58e85692f711d402bae4ca606d3d2262bb76cf1 Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:32:41 2019 -0700 Added files file1 | 0 file2 | 0 file3 | 0 3 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) 

‣ git log --name-only --oneline ed080bc (HEAD -> master) mv file4 to file5 file5 5c4e8cf foo file1 file1 1b64134 foobar file2, rm file3 file2 file3 e0dd02c Add file4 file4 b58e856 Added files file1 file2 file3 

‣ git log --pretty=oneline --graph --name-status * ed080bc88b7bf0c5125e093a26549f3755f7ae74 (HEAD -> master) mv file4 to file5 | R100 file4 file5 * 5c4e8cfbe3554fe3d7d99b5ae4ba381fa1cdb328 foo file1 | M file1 * 1b6413400b5a6a96d062a7c13109e6325e081c85 foobar file2, rm file3 | M file2 | D file3 * e0dd02ce23977c782987a206236da5ab784543cc Add file4 | A file4 * b58e85692f711d402bae4ca606d3d2262bb76cf1 Added files A file1 A file2 A file3 

‣ git diff-tree HEAD ed080bc88b7bf0c5125e093a26549f3755f7ae74 :100644 000000 e69de29bb2d1d6434b8b29ae775ad8c2e48c5391 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 D file4 :000000 100644 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 e69de29bb2d1d6434b8b29ae775ad8c2e48c5391 A file5 

‣ git log --stat --pretty=short --graph * commit ed080bc88b7bf0c5125e093a26549f3755f7ae74 (HEAD -> master) | Author: My Name <> | | mv file4 to file5 | | file4 => file5 | 0 | 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) | * commit 5c4e8cfbe3554fe3d7d99b5ae4ba381fa1cdb328 | Author: My Name <> | | foo file1 | | file1 | 3 +++ | 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+) | * commit 1b6413400b5a6a96d062a7c13109e6325e081c85 | Author: My Name <> | | foobar file2, rm file3 | | file2 | 1 + | file3 | 0 | 2 files changed, 1 insertion(+) | * commit e0dd02ce23977c782987a206236da5ab784543cc | Author: My Name <> | | Add file4 | | file4 | 0 | 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) | * commit b58e85692f711d402bae4ca606d3d2262bb76cf1 Author: My Name <> Added files file1 | 0 file2 | 0 file3 | 0 3 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) 

‣ git log --name-only --pretty=format: file5 file1 file2 file3 file4 file1 file2 file3 

‣ git log --name-status --pretty=format: R100 file4 file5 M file1 M file2 D file3 A file4 A file1 A file2 A file3 

‣ git diff --stat 'HEAD^!' file4 => file5 | 0 1 file changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) 

‣ git show commit ed080bc88b7bf0c5125e093a26549f3755f7ae74 (HEAD -> master) Author: My Name <> Date: Mon Oct 21 15:46:04 2019 -0700 mv file4 to file5 diff --git a/file4 b/file5 similarity index 100% rename from file4 rename to file5 

Credits to @CB-Bailey @Peter-Suwara @Gaurav @Omer-Dagan @xsor @Hazok @nrz @ptc

I find the following is the ideal display for listing what files changed per commit in a concise format:

git log --pretty=oneline --graph --name-status 

Another useful command would be git diff-tree <hash> where hash can be also a hash range (denoted by <old>..<new> notation). An output example:

$ git diff-tree HEAD :040000 040000 8e09a be406 M myfile 

The fields are:

source mode, destination mode, source hash, destination hash, status, and filename

Statuses are the ones you would expect: D (deleted), A (added), M (modified), etc. See the man page for full description

I am using:

git diff-tree -v --name-status -r <commit-id> 

And it shows very similar output like svn log -v

I generally use these to get the logs:

$ git log --name-status --author='<Name of author>' --grep="<text from Commit message>" $ git log --name-status --grep="<text from Commit message>"