Lesson 6 of 51 ~10 min

Course progress

0%

Viewing History and Diffs

Use git log, show, and diff to inspect commits and changes.

1 Quiz: First Repository and Commit 2 Your First Repository and Commit 3 Branching and Merging 4 Quiz: Viewing History and Diffs 5 Viewing History and Diffs 6 Quiz: Undoing Changes 7 Undoing Changes 8 Quiz: Working with Remotes 9 Quiz: .gitignore and Cleaning 10 .gitignore and Cleaning 11 Quiz: Tagging Basics 12 Tagging Basics 13 Quiz: Stashing Changes 14 Stashing Changes 15 Quiz: Collaboration Workflow 16 Basic Collaboration Workflow 17 Checkpoint: Getting Started Quiz

Understanding history helps you reason about changes and collaborate effectively.

View commit history

git log --oneline --graph --decorate --all
git log --stat

See a specific commit

git show HEAD
git show <commitSHA>

Compare changes

git diff # unstaged changes
git diff --staged # staged vs last commit
git diff main..feature/x

Limit and search logs

git log -n 5
git log --author="Your Name" --since="1 week ago"
git log -S "search-term" # pickaxe search by added/removed text

Checklist

You can read git log output
You can show a specific commit
You can diff unstaged and staged changes