4 A revision parameter typically, but not necessarily, names a
5 commit object. They use what is called an 'extended SHA1'
6 syntax. Here are various ways to spell object names. The
7 ones listed near the end of this list are to name trees and
8 blobs contained in a commit.
10 * The full SHA1 object name (40-byte hexadecimal string), or
11 a substring of such that is unique within the repository.
12 E.g. dae86e1950b1277e545cee180551750029cfe735 and dae86e both
13 name the same commit object if there are no other object in
14 your repository whose object name starts with dae86e.
16 * An output from 'git describe'; i.e. a closest tag, optionally
17 followed by a dash and a number of commits, followed by a dash, a
18 `g`, and an abbreviated object name.
20 * A symbolic ref name. E.g. 'master' typically means the commit
21 object referenced by refs/heads/master. If you
22 happen to have both heads/master and tags/master, you can
23 explicitly say 'heads/master' to tell git which one you mean.
24 When ambiguous, a `<name>` is disambiguated by taking the
25 first match in the following rules:
27 . if `$GIT_DIR/<name>` exists, that is what you mean (this is usually
28 useful only for `HEAD`, `FETCH_HEAD`, `ORIG_HEAD` and `MERGE_HEAD`);
30 . otherwise, `refs/<name>` if exists;
32 . otherwise, `refs/tags/<name>` if exists;
34 . otherwise, `refs/heads/<name>` if exists;
36 . otherwise, `refs/remotes/<name>` if exists;
38 . otherwise, `refs/remotes/<name>/HEAD` if exists.
40 HEAD names the commit your changes in the working tree is based on.
41 FETCH_HEAD records the branch you fetched from a remote repository
42 with your last 'git fetch' invocation.
43 ORIG_HEAD is created by commands that moves your HEAD in a drastic
44 way, to record the position of the HEAD before their operation, so that
45 you can change the tip of the branch back to the state before you ran
47 MERGE_HEAD records the commit(s) you are merging into your branch
48 when you run 'git merge'.
50 Note that any of the `refs/*` cases above may come either from
51 the `$GIT_DIR/refs` directory or from the `$GIT_DIR/packed-refs` file.
53 * A ref followed by the suffix '@' with a date specification
55 pair (e.g. '\{yesterday\}', '\{1 month 2 weeks 3 days 1 hour 1
56 second ago\}' or '\{1979-02-26 18:30:00\}') to specify the value
57 of the ref at a prior point in time. This suffix may only be
58 used immediately following a ref name and the ref must have an
59 existing log ($GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>). Note that this looks up the state
60 of your *local* ref at a given time; e.g., what was in your local
61 `master` branch last week. If you want to look at commits made during
62 certain times, see `--since` and `--until`.
64 * A ref followed by the suffix '@' with an ordinal specification
65 enclosed in a brace pair (e.g. '\{1\}', '\{15\}') to specify
66 the n-th prior value of that ref. For example 'master@\{1\}'
67 is the immediate prior value of 'master' while 'master@\{5\}'
68 is the 5th prior value of 'master'. This suffix may only be used
69 immediately following a ref name and the ref must have an existing
70 log ($GIT_DIR/logs/<ref>).
72 * You can use the '@' construct with an empty ref part to get at a
73 reflog of the current branch. For example, if you are on the
74 branch 'blabla', then '@\{1\}' means the same as 'blabla@\{1\}'.
76 * The special construct '@\{-<n>\}' means the <n>th branch checked out
77 before the current one.
79 * The suffix '@\{upstream\}' to a ref (short form 'ref@\{u\}') refers to
80 the branch the ref is set to build on top of. Missing ref defaults
81 to the current branch.
83 * A suffix '{caret}' to a revision parameter (e.g. 'HEAD{caret}') means the first parent of
84 that commit object. '{caret}<n>' means the <n>th parent (i.e.
86 is equivalent to 'rev{caret}1'). As a special rule,
87 'rev{caret}0' means the commit itself and is used when 'rev' is the
88 object name of a tag object that refers to a commit object.
90 * A suffix '{tilde}<n>' to a revision parameter means the commit
91 object that is the <n>th generation grand-parent of the named
92 commit object, following only the first parent. I.e. rev~3 is
93 equivalent to rev{caret}{caret}{caret} which is equivalent to
94 rev{caret}1{caret}1{caret}1. See below for a illustration of
95 the usage of this form.
97 * A suffix '{caret}' followed by an object type name enclosed in
98 brace pair (e.g. `v0.99.8{caret}\{commit\}`) means the object
99 could be a tag, and dereference the tag recursively until an
100 object of that type is found or the object cannot be
101 dereferenced anymore (in which case, barf). `rev{caret}0`
102 introduced earlier is a short-hand for `rev{caret}\{commit\}`.
104 * A suffix '{caret}' followed by an empty brace pair
105 (e.g. `v0.99.8{caret}\{\}`) means the object could be a tag,
106 and dereference the tag recursively until a non-tag object is
109 * A colon, followed by a slash, followed by a text (e.g. `:/fix nasty bug`): this names
110 a commit whose commit message matches the specified regular expression.
111 This name returns the youngest matching commit which is
112 reachable from any ref. If the commit message starts with a
113 '!', you have to repeat that; the special sequence ':/!',
114 followed by something else than '!' is reserved for now.
115 The regular expression can match any part of the commit message. To
116 match messages starting with a string, one can use e.g. `:/^foo`.
118 * A suffix ':' followed by a path (e.g. `HEAD:README`); this names the blob or tree
119 at the given path in the tree-ish object named by the part
121 ':path' (with an empty part before the colon, e.g. `:README`)
122 is a special case of the syntax described next: content
123 recorded in the index at the given path.
125 * A colon, optionally followed by a stage number (0 to 3) and a
126 colon, followed by a path (e.g. `:0:README`); this names a blob object in the
127 index at the given path. Missing stage number (and the colon
128 that follows it, e.g. `:README`) names a stage 0 entry. During a merge, stage
129 1 is the common ancestor, stage 2 is the target branch's version
130 (typically the current branch), and stage 3 is the version from
131 the branch being merged.
133 Here is an illustration, by Jon Loeliger. Both commit nodes B
134 and C are parents of commit node A. Parent commits are ordered
137 ........................................
148 ........................................
153 D = A^^ = A^1^1 = A~2
156 G = A^^^ = A^1^1^1 = A~3
157 H = D^2 = B^^2 = A^^^2 = A~2^2
158 I = F^ = B^3^ = A^^3^
159 J = F^2 = B^3^2 = A^^3^2
165 History traversing commands such as 'git log' operate on a set
166 of commits, not just a single commit. To these commands,
167 specifying a single revision with the notation described in the
168 previous section means the set of commits reachable from that
169 commit, following the commit ancestry chain.
171 To exclude commits reachable from a commit, a prefix `{caret}`
172 notation is used. E.g. `{caret}r1 r2` means commits reachable
173 from `r2` but exclude the ones reachable from `r1`.
175 This set operation appears so often that there is a shorthand
176 for it. When you have two commits `r1` and `r2` (named according
177 to the syntax explained in SPECIFYING REVISIONS above), you can ask
178 for commits that are reachable from r2 excluding those that are reachable
179 from r1 by `{caret}r1 r2` and it can be written as `r1..r2`.
181 A similar notation `r1\...r2` is called symmetric difference
182 of `r1` and `r2` and is defined as
183 `r1 r2 --not $(git merge-base --all r1 r2)`.
184 It is the set of commits that are reachable from either one of
185 `r1` or `r2` but not from both.
187 Two other shorthands for naming a set that is formed by a commit
188 and its parent commits exist. The `r1{caret}@` notation means all
189 parents of `r1`. `r1{caret}!` includes commit `r1` but excludes
192 Here are a handful of examples:
projects / git / blob