TortoiseGit Manual

Figure 2.27. The Revision Log Dialog

There are several places from where you can show the Log dialog:

The top pane has an Actions column containing icons that summarize what has been done in that revision. There are four different icons, each shown in its own column.

If a revision modified a file or directory, the modified icon is shown in the first column.

If a revision added a file or directory, the added icon is shown in the second column.

If a revision deleted a file or directory, the deleted icon is shown in the third column.

If a revision replaced(rename) a file, the replaced icon is shown in the fourth column.

The top pane has a Graph column with a line showing the commits, merges and branches. There are two types of shapes.

The circles indicate normal commits w/o any branching.

The squares indicate merges and branchings. In the first case these are merge commits (i.e., a commit with more than one parent) and in the latter case these are also normal commits. A square was chosen here to indicate that a branch goes off.

The colors of the lines (and of the shapes) are there to make the graph better readable (i.e., to see to which branch they belong). The colors are configurable (cf. the section called “TortoiseGit color Settings 3”).

The top pane also has a message column. In this column the subjects of the commits are shown. Commits which have an associated reference are decorated with a label.

Tags are by default displayed as yellow rectangles. In Git there are two tag types: normal tags and annotated tags. The annotated ones have an apex at the right side.

Normally branches are displayed as normal rectangles. The active branch is displayed as a dark red rectangle (by default), the green ones are local branches and the peach ones are remote branches.

The boxes with rounded corners for local branches indicate that it has an associated remote tracking. The boxes with rounded corners for remote tracking branches are used to indicate which of (possible several remote branches) is the corresponding remote tracking branch (e.g., master and origin/master).

The stash has a dark gray rectangle.

There are also rectangles to indicate the bad versions (light red) on bisecting, blue for known good and gray for skip.

Depending on what branch/tag label you open the context menu, it is optimized for that ref it was opened on (e.g., a local branch offers directly to switch to it and to push it whereas a remote branch has no push option).

The colors are configurable (cf. the section called “TortoiseGit color Settings 2”). Also, the labels can be configured to be a the right side of the commit message or the displayed text to contain the whole of the commit message (cf. the section called “TortoiseGit Dialog Settings”).

Figure 2.28. The Revision Log Dialog Top Pane with Context Menu

The top pane of the Log dialog has a context menu that allows you to access much more information. You can press the Shift key to see the extended menu with some more options (e.g., pushing and opening the log from every commit).

Figure 2.31. Top Pane Context Menu for 2 Selected Revisions

If you select two revisions at once (using the usual Ctrl-modifier), the context menu changes and gives you fewer options:

If you select two or more revisions (using the usual Ctrl or Shift modifiers), You can combine select commits to one commit. And cherry pick these commits to current branch.

Figure 2.32. The Log Dialog Bottom Pane with Context Menu

The bottom pane of the Log dialog also has a context menu that allows you to

If you want to restrict the log messages to show only those you are interested in rather than scrolling through a list of hundreds, you can use the filter controls at the top of the Log Dialog.

The first element is the branch/revision filter. Clicking on it opens the Reference Browser (see the section called “Browse All Refs”). There you can select single or multiple references. If you select exactly two references, you can choose how to combine them (showing especially both A and B "A B"; showing differences "A...B" or all commits between A and B "A..B"). This filter element also contains a special context menu. Here shortcuts for "HEAD", "FETCH_HEAD", "All" and "All local branches" are available. Also, the last manual selected filters are included there.

The start and end date controls allow you to restrict the output to a known date range. The search box allows you to show only messages which contain a particular phrase. A default limitation for From or the number of log entries displayed can be configured in the settings dialog on the Dialogs 1 page (cf. the section called “TortoiseGit Dialog Settings”). When a default limitation is active, the From has a blueish background. By opening the context menu on the date picker, you can configure the default limit or disable the default limit for the current dialogue.

Click on the search icon (the magnifier glass) to select which information you want to search in, to choose regex mode, and to toggle case sensitivity. Deselecting "Paths" can significantly speed up the filter.

Figure 2.33. Option Menu for the Log Filter

Normally you will only need a simple sub-string search, but if you need to more flexible search terms, you can use regular expressions. If you hover the mouse over the box, a tooltip will give hints on how to use the regex functions. To invert the results for the entire search expression, start the string with an exclamation mark ('!'). You can also find online documentation and a tutorial at https://www.regular-expressions.info/ . The filter works by checking whether your filter string matches the log entries, and then only those entries which match the filter string are shown.

Simple sub-string search works in a manner similar to a search engine. Strings to search for are separated by spaces, and all strings must match. You can use a leading - to specify that a particular sub-string is not found (invert matching for that term), and you can use ! at the start of the expression to invert matching for the entire expression. You can use a leading + to specify that a sub-string should be included, even if previously excluded with a -. Note that the order of inclusion/exclusion is significant here. You can use quotation marks to surround a string which must contain spaces, and if you want to search for a literal quotation mark you can use two quotation marks together as a self-escaping sequence. Note that the backslash character is not used as an escape character and has no special significance in simple sub-string searches. Examples will make this easier:

Alice Bob -Eve
			

searches for strings containing both Alice and Bob but not Eve

Alice -Bob +Eve
			

searches for strings containing both Alice but not Bob, or strings which contain Eve.

-Case +SpecialCase
			

searches for strings which do not contain Case, but still include strings which contain SpecialCase.

!Alice Bob
			

searches for strings which do not contain both Alice and Bob

!-Alice -Bob
			

do you remember De Morgan's theorem? NOT(NOT Alice AND NOT Bob) reduces to (Alice OR Bob).

"Alice and Bob"
			

searches for the literal expression “Alice and Bob”

""
			

searches for a double-quote anywhere in the text

"Alice says ""hi"" to Bob"
			

searches for the literal expression “Alice says "hi" to Bob”.

You can also filter the path names in the bottom pane using the View → Hide unrelated changed paths Related paths are those which contain the path used to display the log. If you fetch the log for a folder, that means anything in that folder or below it. For a file it means just that one file. If you want to gray out the unrelated ones, check View → Gray unrelated changed paths Uncheck both menu items to hide the unrelated paths completely.

In the lower left there are the checkboxes All branches and Show whole project. Use these to override the branch resp. a file/folder filter and show the log for the whole repository. Please note that these settings are remembered for a repository - even if you started the log dialog on a single file.

You can show whole project history, no choose directory or file by click Show Whole Project

View+Labels → Tags View+Labels → Local branches View+Labels → Remote branches You can disable showing some reference types in the log graph.

View → Gravatar You can enable/disable Gravatar for a specific repository.

Walk Behavior → First Parent just follow up first parent commit. This will help understand the overall history.

Walk Behavior → No merges Skips all merge points.

Walk Behavior → Follow renames This is available to a single file only, which tracks renames. Otherwise, the log list stops at the commit that the current filename introduced.

Walk Behavior → Compressed Graph The log graph is simplified to include merge points, commits with references, and possibly other commits.

Walk Behavior → Show labeled commits only The log graph is simplified to include commits with references only.

You can use the drop-down control on the upper right to select a navigation type (e.g. Author Email, Parent 1, Selection history), then use the Up and Down green buttons to navigate through the commits which match the navigation type relative to the current selected one.

Alternatively to the Up and Down green buttons, hotkeys ALT+UP and ALT+DOWN are also available.

Regarding the navigation type "Selection History", TortoiseGit memorizes the history of selected commits, so that you can navigate through those commits you selected in the past easily. You can also navigate them by pressing ALT+LEFT, ALT+RIGHT, Browse Back, and Browse Forward. Back and Forward buttons on mouse are also available.

If you also press SHIFT you can navigate through the selection history without selecting the last commits (i.e., just scrolling to and highlighting them). This helps you to navigate through commits and then select the commit(s) you really want to select (e.g. you can compare the current selected commit with the one you selected before).

If you want to jump to a commit with a particular hash, you may do so by pressing Ctrl+V or Shift+Insert (into any log dialog element other than the search box) to paste the hash from the clipboard. If it has the form of a valid commit hash, the log dialog will attempt to jump to it.

The Statistics button brings up a box showing some interesting information about the revisions shown in the Log dialog. This shows how many authors have been at work, how many commits they have made, progress by week, and much more. Now you can see at a glance who has been working hardest and who is slacking ;-)

Commits by Author Page

Figure 2.34. Commits-by-Author Histogram

This graph shows you which authors have been active on the project as a simple histogram, stacked histogram or pie chart.

Figure 2.35. Commits-by-Author Pie Chart

Where there are a few major authors and many minor contributors, the number of tiny segments can make the graph more difficult to read. The slider at the bottom allows you to set a threshold (as a percentage of total commits) below which any activity is grouped into an Others category.

Commits by date Page

Figure 2.36. Commits-by-date Graph

This page gives you a graphical representation of project activity in terms of number of commits and author. This gives some idea of when a project is being worked on, and who was working at which time.

When there are several authors, you will get many lines on the graph. There are two views available here: normal, where each author's activity is relative to the base line, and stacked, where each author's activity is relative to the line underneath. The latter option avoids the lines crossing over, which can make the graph easier to read, but less easy to see one author's output.

By default the analysis is case-sensitive, so users PeterEgan and PeteRegan are treated as different authors. However, in many cases user names are not case-sensitive, and are sometimes entered inconsistently, so you may want DavidMorgan and davidmorgan to be treated as the same person. Use the Authors case insensitive checkbox to control how this is handled.

The statistics dialog also honors the .mailmap file (see gitmailmap(5) man-page).

Note that the statistics cover the same period as the Log dialog. If that is only displaying one revision then the statistics will not tell you very much.

If you want to check the repository again for newer log messages, you can simply refresh the view using F5.