How to get change history for a specific file in git repository

Question

I would like to do something like:

git history my_file

possible output

2010-05-16
+ add this line
+ more code here

2010-05-15
+ delete code below
- bad code
- more bad codd

2010-05-12
+ changes made here

Answer 1

Try:

git log -p -- filename

Answer 2

The closest to what you want would be, from git log:

git log -p -U0 --pretty=format:%ai -- filename

• -p: as Charles Bailey mentions in his answer: Generate patch
• -U0: Generate diffs with 0 lines of context instead of the usual three.
• --pretty=format:%ai: precede the patch output with the author date, ISO 8601 format.

Example:

/c/Prog/Git/git2/git (master)
$ git log -p -U0 --pretty=format:%ai -- wt-status.c
2010-03-24 16:25:43 -0700
2010-03-13 23:00:27 +0100
diff --git a/wt-status.c b/wt-status.c
index e0e915e..5848f1c 100644
--- a/wt-status.c
+++ b/wt-status.c
@@ -306,0 +307,2 @@ static void wt_status_collect_changes_worktree(struct wt_status *s)
+       if (!s->show_untracked_files)
+               DIFF_OPT_SET(&rev.diffopt, IGNORE_UNTRACKED_IN_SUBMODULES);

2010-03-08 22:58:09 -0800
diff --git a/wt-status.c b/wt-status.c
index 5807fc3..dcaec7f 100644
--- a/wt-status.c
+++ b/wt-status.c
@@ -292,0 +293 @@ static void wt_status_collect_changes_index(struct wt_status *s)
+       struct setup_revision_opt opt;
@@ -295,2 +296,4 @@ static void wt_status_collect_changes_index(struct wt_status *s)
-       setup_revisions(0, NULL, &rev,
-               s->is_initial ? EMPTY_TREE_SHA1_HEX : s->reference);
+       memset(&opt, 0, sizeof(opt));
+       opt.def = s->is_initial ? EMPTY_TREE_SHA1_HEX : s->reference;
+       setup_revisions(0, NULL, &rev, &opt);
+

Answer 3

A nice UI view of the file history is also given if you pass the file to gitk, which comes with your Git installation.

On Windows...

gitk.cmd <file>