Visualizing branch topology in git

Question

I'm playing with git in isolation on my own machine, and even like that I find it difficult to maintain a mental model of all my branches and commits. I know I can do a git log to see the commit history from where I am, but is there a way to see the entire branch topography, something like these ascii maps that seem to be used everywhere for explaining branches?

      .-A---M---N---O---P
     /     /   /   /   /
    I     B   C   D   E
     \   /   /   /   /
      `-------------'

It just feels like someone coming along and trying to pick up my repository would have difficulty working out exactly what was going on.

I guess I'm influenced by AccuRev's stream browser...

Answer 1

git log --graph or gitk. (Both also accept --all, which will show all the branches instead of just the current one.)

Answer 2

I usually use

git log --graph --full-history --all --pretty=format:"%h%x09%d%x20%s"

With colors (if your shell is Bash):

git log --graph --full-history --all --color \
        --pretty=format:"%x1b[31m%h%x09%x1b[32m%d%x1b[0m%x20%s"

This will print text-based representation like this:

* 040cc7c       (HEAD, master) Mannual is NOT built by default
* a29ceb7       Removed offensive binary file that was compiled on my machine and was hence incompatible with other machines.
| * 901c7dd     (cvc3) cvc3 now configured before building
| * d9e8b5e     More sane Yices SMT solver caller
| | * 5b98a10   (nullvars) All uninitialized variables get zero inits
| |/
| * 1cad874     CFLAGS for cvc3 to work succesfully
| *   1579581   Merge branch 'llvm-inv' into cvc3
| |\
| | * a9a246b   nostaticalias option
| | * 73b91cc   Comment about aliases.
| | * 001b20a   Prints number of iteration and node.
| |/
|/|
| * 39d2638     Included header files to cvc3 sources
| * 266023b     Added cvc3 to blast infrastructure.
| * ac9eb10     Initial sources of cvc3-1.5
|/
* d642f88       Option -aliasstat, by default stats are suppressed

(You could just use git log --format=oneline, but it will tie commit messages to numbers, which looks less pretty IMHO).

To make a shortcut for this command, you may want to edit your ~/.gitconfig file:

[alias]
  gr = log --graph --full-history --all --color --pretty=tformat:"%x1b[31m%h%x09%x1b[32m%d%x1b[0m%x20%s%x20%x1b[33m(%an)%x1b[0m"

Answer 3

I like, with git log, to do:

 git log --graph --oneline --branches

(also with --all, for viewing remote branches as well)

Works with recent Git releases: introduced since 1.6.3 (Thu, 7 May 2009)

• "--pretty=<style>" option to the log family of commands can now be spelled as "--format=<style>".
  In addition, --format=%formatstring is a short-hand for --pretty=tformat:%formatstring.

• "--oneline" is a synonym for "--pretty=oneline --abbrev-commit".

PS D:\git\tests\finalRepo> git log --graph --oneline --branches --all
* 4919b68 a second bug10 fix
* 3469e13 a first bug10 fix
* dbcc7aa a first legacy evolution
| * 55aac85 another main evol
| | * 47e6ee1 a second bug10 fix
| | * 8183707 a first bug10 fix
| |/
| * e727105 a second evol for 2.0
| * 473d44e a main evol
|/
* b68c1f5 first evol, for making 1.0

You can also limit the span of the log display (number of commits):

PS D:\git\tests\finalRepo> git log --graph --oneline --branches --all -5
* 4919b68 a second bug10 fix
* 3469e13 a first bug10 fix
* dbcc7aa a first legacy evolution
| * 55aac85 another main evol
| | * 47e6ee1 a second bug10 fix

(show only the last 5 commits)

---

What I do not like about the current selected solution is:

 git log --graph

It displayed way too much info (when I want only to look at a quick summary):

PS D:\git\tests\finalRepo> git log --graph
* commit 4919b681db93df82ead7ba6190eca6a49a9d82e7
| Author: VonC <[email protected]>
| Date:   Sat Nov 14 13:42:20 2009 +0100
|
|     a second bug10 fix
|
* commit 3469e13f8d0fadeac5fcb6f388aca69497fd08a9
| Author: VonC <[email protected]>
| Date:   Sat Nov 14 13:41:50 2009 +0100
|
|     a first bug10 fix
|

gitk.

is great, but forces me to leave the shell session for another window, whereas displaying the last n commits quickly is often enough.

Answer 4

Gitx is also a fantastic visualization tool if you happen to be on OS X.