CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitblame
PeterJCLaw
PeterJCLaw

Reputation: 1892

How do I git blame without seeing merges

If I've got a file whose history is like this:

----A----B
     \    \
      C----D----E

and I do a blame from E then I'd like to see what changed in revisions B & C, but I don't really care about D, since that was a merge.

Is there a way I can do this? I guess I'm looking for some kind of --no-merges option to git blame, but I'm not seeing one in the manual.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 3423

Answers (3)

idbrii
idbrii

Reputation: 11966

As sehe and void.pointer suggested, use:

git blame --no-merges

It's documented on rev-list options:

--no-merges

Do not print commits with more than one parent. This is exactly the same as --max-parents=1.

Upvotes: 0

Robin Green
Robin Green

Reputation: 33093

An alternative is to use git log -L start,end:filename which shows (by default, the complete) history of the line or lines numbered between start and end in filename. You can also use git log -L /regex/,/regexend/:filename to identify lines by a regex instead of by line numbers. By its nature you will probably get different results than with git blame in many cases, but I was able to find the "real" (i.e. non-merge) change more conveniently than with git blame.

Upvotes: 0

John Feminella
John Feminella

Reputation: 311735

Actually, you do care about D. Consider this case:

in commit B:
2) banana
3) coconut
4) domino     // conflicts with C

in commit C:
2) banana
3) coconut
4) elephant   // conflicts with B

In commit D, we resolve the conflict:

in commit D:
2) banana
3) coconut
4) domino-elephant

Notice that in D, a line appears which didn't appear in either B or C. If you ignore merges, you would never see that, and you'd never be able to tell where line 4 came from, which is bad.

Upvotes: 3

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