Make git log «file» show merge commits

git

So I have a thing happen to me that happened once before: I’d done git log --follow «file» and the newest commit I saw was the deletion of «file». However, the file was still in my repo.

Later I figured out that I’d re-added the file in a merge commit (probably one line of development had removed the file while the other one had changed it).

However, git log «file» (or git log --follow «file») seems to ignore merge commits when looking for changes to «file». Is there any way to force it to not do that?

I’m using git 2.4.0.

Best Answer

Try adding the --simplify-merges flag. Despite sounding like an option that would remove merges from the log, it actually adds them in many cases.

Taken from this answer.

Related Solutions

Linux – git: Keep changelog for file when moving to a different repository

Assume you want to transfer the history of filename.conf from one source repository to another receiving repository. I think the strategy you want to follow is:

In the source repository, create a branch of commits which are re-written to contain only filename.conf.
Merge the independent line of commits into a normal branch in the receiving repository.

Definitely make backups of your repositories before you do this!

In the source repository, use filter-branch to rebuild the history removing everything except filename.conf.

git checkout -b filtered-commits
git filter-branch -f --prune-empty --tree-filter 'find . -not -name filename.conf -exec rm {} \;' filtered-commits

Then, in the receiving repository:

git pull path/to/source/repo

If you also need to move the path that filename.conf is in within the repository, you'll probably need to use the --subdirectory-filter option on git filter-branch.

How to add a parent commit before all other commits in Git

Something like this should work.

# Create a new branch with the old history
$ git checkout --orphan old-history    
$ git add <old-files>
$ git commit

# Rebase master on top of the branch with old-history
$ git checkout master
$ git pull --rebase . old-history

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux – git: Keep changelog for file when moving to a different repository

How to add a parent commit before all other commits in Git

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