Git-Fu - How to be a Git Detective

PURPOSE

There are times when you need to figure out exactly who made the changes in a file. Sometimes, the standard git log command will suffice, but there are times when you need to dig deeper and find out why a change was made.

Playing Detective

git blame <file_name> # line by line commit history of the current state of a file git log -p <file_name> # shows history per commit for a file git log --grep "search_string" # searches for the commit messages containing string git log -S "search_string" # searches for actual code within any commit, like function_name() git log --oneline # short commit history git log --author="partial name of author" # commits by a particular user # Once you have a commit hash, you can use: git diff <commit_hash> git show <commit_hash> # to learn what all changes were part of the commit history.