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1git-blame(1)
2============
3
4NAME
5----
26e8c5d3 6git-blame - Show what revision and author last modified each line of a file
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7
8SYNOPSIS
9--------
acca687f 10[verse]
b1889c36 11'git blame' [-c] [-b] [-l] [--root] [-t] [-f] [-n] [-s] [-p] [-w] [--incremental] [-L n,m]
88d50e78 12 [-S <revs-file>] [-M] [-C] [-C] [-C] [--since=<date>]
b452cc16 13 [<rev> | --contents <file> | --reverse <rev>] [--] <file>
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14
15DESCRIPTION
16-----------
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17
18Annotates each line in the given file with information from the revision which
19last modified the line. Optionally, start annotating from the given revision.
20
b89510f0 21The command can also limit the range of lines annotated.
acca687f 22
b89510f0 23The report does not tell you anything about lines which have been deleted or
0b444cdb 24replaced; you need to use a tool such as 'git diff' or the "pickaxe"
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25interface briefly mentioned in the following paragraph.
26
27Apart from supporting file annotation, git also supports searching the
23bfbb81 28development history for when a code snippet occurred in a change. This makes it
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29possible to track when a code snippet was added to a file, moved or copied
30between files, and eventually deleted or replaced. It works by searching for
31a text string in the diff. A small example:
32
33-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
34$ git log --pretty=oneline -S'blame_usage'
355040f17eba15504bad66b14a645bddd9b015ebb7 blame -S <ancestry-file>
36ea4c7f9bf69e781dd0cd88d2bccb2bf5cc15c9a7 git-blame: Make the output
37-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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38
39OPTIONS
40-------
635f4a30 41include::blame-options.txt[]
b19ee24b 42
635f4a30 43-c::
5162e697 44 Use the same output mode as linkgit:git-annotate[1] (Default: off).
8f2b72a9 45
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46--score-debug::
47 Include debugging information related to the movement of
48 lines between files (see `-C`) and lines moved within a
49 file (see `-M`). The first number listed is the score.
50 This is the number of alphanumeric characters detected
b89510f0 51 as having been moved between or within files. This must be above
0b444cdb 52 a certain threshold for 'git blame' to consider those lines
635f4a30 53 of code to have been moved.
8f2b72a9 54
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55-f::
56--show-name::
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57 Show the filename in the original commit. By default
58 the filename is shown if there is any line that came from a
59 file with a different name, due to rename detection.
b24642b2 60
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61-n::
62--show-number::
b89510f0 63 Show the line number in the original commit (Default: off).
b24642b2 64
093dc5be 65-s::
b89510f0 66 Suppress the author name and timestamp from the output.
093dc5be 67
b82871b3 68-w::
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69 Ignore whitespace when comparing the parent's version and
70 the child's to find where the lines came from.
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71
72
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73THE PORCELAIN FORMAT
74--------------------
75
76In this format, each line is output after a header; the
23bfbb81 77header at the minimum has the first line which has:
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78
79- 40-byte SHA-1 of the commit the line is attributed to;
80- the line number of the line in the original file;
81- the line number of the line in the final file;
b89510f0 82- on a line that starts a group of lines from a different
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83 commit than the previous one, the number of lines in this
84 group. On subsequent lines this field is absent.
85
86This header line is followed by the following information
87at least once for each commit:
88
b89510f0 89- the author name ("author"), email ("author-mail"), time
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90 ("author-time"), and timezone ("author-tz"); similarly
91 for committer.
b89510f0 92- the filename in the commit that the line is attributed to.
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93- the first line of the commit log message ("summary").
94
95The contents of the actual line is output after the above
96header, prefixed by a TAB. This is to allow adding more
97header elements later.
98
acca687f 99
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100SPECIFYING RANGES
101-----------------
acca687f 102
0b444cdb 103Unlike 'git blame' and 'git annotate' in older versions of git, the extent
b89510f0 104of the annotation can be limited to both line ranges and revision
acca687f 105ranges. When you are interested in finding the origin for
b89510f0 106lines 40-60 for file `foo`, you can use the `-L` option like so
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107(they mean the same thing -- both ask for 21 lines starting at
108line 40):
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109
110 git blame -L 40,60 foo
42f62db9 111 git blame -L 40,+21 foo
acca687f 112
b89510f0 113Also you can use a regular expression to specify the line range:
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114
115 git blame -L '/^sub hello {/,/^}$/' foo
116
b89510f0 117which limits the annotation to the body of the `hello` subroutine.
18d5453e 118
b89510f0 119When you are not interested in changes older than version
acca687f 120v2.6.18, or changes older than 3 weeks, you can use revision
0b444cdb 121range specifiers similar to 'git rev-list':
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122
123 git blame v2.6.18.. -- foo
124 git blame --since=3.weeks -- foo
125
126When revision range specifiers are used to limit the annotation,
127lines that have not changed since the range boundary (either the
128commit v2.6.18 or the most recent commit that is more than 3
129weeks old in the above example) are blamed for that range
130boundary commit.
131
b89510f0 132A particularly useful way is to see if an added file has lines
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133created by copy-and-paste from existing files. Sometimes this
134indicates that the developer was being sloppy and did not
135refactor the code properly. You can first find the commit that
136introduced the file with:
137
138 git log --diff-filter=A --pretty=short -- foo
139
140and then annotate the change between the commit and its
141parents, using `commit{caret}!` notation:
142
143 git blame -C -C -f $commit^! -- foo
144
145
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146INCREMENTAL OUTPUT
147------------------
148
149When called with `--incremental` option, the command outputs the
150result as it is built. The output generally will talk about
151lines touched by more recent commits first (i.e. the lines will
152be annotated out of order) and is meant to be used by
153interactive viewers.
154
155The output format is similar to the Porcelain format, but it
156does not contain the actual lines from the file that is being
157annotated.
158
159. Each blame entry always starts with a line of:
160
161 <40-byte hex sha1> <sourceline> <resultline> <num_lines>
162+
163Line numbers count from 1.
164
b89510f0 165. The first time that a commit shows up in the stream, it has various
57e7a0a4 166 other information about it printed out with a one-word tag at the
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167 beginning of each line describing the extra commit information (author,
168 email, committer, dates, summary, etc.).
57e7a0a4 169
b89510f0 170. Unlike the Porcelain format, the filename information is always
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171 given and terminates the entry:
172
173 "filename" <whitespace-quoted-filename-goes-here>
174+
b89510f0 175and thus it is really quite easy to parse for some line- and word-oriented
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176parser (which should be quite natural for most scripting languages).
177+
178[NOTE]
179For people who do parsing: to make it more robust, just ignore any
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180lines between the first and last one ("<sha1>" and "filename" lines)
181where you do not recognize the tag words (or care about that particular
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182one) at the beginning of the "extended information" lines. That way, if
183there is ever added information (like the commit encoding or extended
b89510f0 184commit commentary), a blame viewer will not care.
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185
186
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187MAPPING AUTHORS
188---------------
189
190include::mailmap.txt[]
191
192
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193SEE ALSO
194--------
5162e697 195linkgit:git-annotate[1]
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196
197AUTHOR
198------
59eb68aa 199Written by Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
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200
201GIT
202---
9e1f0a85 203Part of the linkgit:git[1] suite