CODEWITHSUNDEEP
git
XGouchet
XGouchet

Reputation: 10203

How to list commits directly between two tags

In order to create an automatic release notes tool, I created a script listing all commits between two tags. But in some case, the tools list more commits than I wanted.

For example, with the following graph : 

* abc123 [v42] Merge branch foo on branch bar
|\
* | def465 ...
* | fba602 ...
| * da07b4 ...
* | 98dc92 [v41] ...

In this case, I want to list the commits directly between v41 and v42. I tried with git log v41..v42 and git log v41...v42 (as suggested by codeWizard) but git also includes the commit da07b4 which is not a children of v41.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1909

Answers (2)

CodeWizard
CodeWizard

Reputation: 142084

You can always use the .. (known as range).

git log [first commit]..[second commit ] --pretty=oneline

This will show you all the commits in the given range.

What is the difference between .. to ...

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git log a..b

means give me all commits that were made since a, until and including b (or, like the man page puts it "Include commits that are reachable from b but exclude those that are reachable from a"), the three-dot variant

git log a...b

means "Include commits that are reachable from either a or b but exclude those that are reachable from both", which is a totally different thing.

Upvotes: 4

XGouchet
XGouchet

Reputation: 10203

As stated in this answer,

"Between" is a somewhat slippery notion, when it comes to git commits.

In my case, I wanted to be sure to ignore commits which were not children of the first tag. here's the script i used, with the help of the git merge-base command which finds the nearest merge base ancestor. 

#!/bin/bash

base_hash=`git log --format=%H -1 $1`

# list all commits between start and end of a version
git log --format="%H" $1^..$2 | while read commit_hash; do
    # check if this commit is reeaaaaally part of the release note
    merge_base=`git merge-base $1 ${commit_hash}`

    if [ "${merge_base}" = "${base_hash}" ]; then 
        # profit
    fi
done

Upvotes: 2

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