Re: 'git log' numbering commits?

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 09:54:12AM +0200, Daniel Wagner wrote:

> My workflow involves a lot of "git rebase -i". For figuring out which
> commit id to use I do first a 'git log --oneline'. Then I do copy past
> the id to the 'git rebase -i'. The reason why I don't use relative
> id such as HEAD~4, because I keep miscounting the commits.
> 
> So my question is there a magic option to have git log to enumerate the
> commits, e.g.
> 
> 1: 2fcd2b3 network: Remove unused function
> 2: b376b2a session: Fix introspection for Change()
> 3: 15c9cd0 wifi: Refactor desctruction of network object
> 4: a9c699f network: Remove device pointer in network_remove()

No, there is no such feature. You can do this:

  git log --oneline | nl "-s: "

but that will just give you the count of commits shown. If the history
is not a single line of development, then those numbers will become
meaningless quickly. Also note that there is an off-by-one in this
scheme; HEAD~2 will be numbered as "3".

If you wanted to simply decorate each commit with a more readable name,
you could do this:

  git log --format='%H: %s' |
  git name-rev --stdin --name-only

though for simplicity, you may find that you prefer to name only based on
the current tip. You can do that like this:

  git log --format='%H: %s' |
  git name-rev --stdin --name-only \
    --refs `git symbolic-ref HEAD`

which yields output like:

  your-topic: network: Remove unused function
  your-topic~1: session: Fix introspection for Change()
  your-topic~2: wifi: Refactor desctruction of network object
  your-topic~3: network: Remove device pointer in network_remove()

However, if you really just want this to make "rebase -i" easier, have
you considered setting the upstream branch config for your branches?
When I create a topic branch, I do:

  git checkout -b topic origin/master

And then "git rebase -i @{upstream}" rebases everything up to my
upstream branch (origin/master). That may be slightly more than I want,
but it lets me see the whole series in the "rebase -i" sequencer. Recent
versions of git even default to "@{upstream}", so you can just say "git rebase
-i".

How do you usually create your branches? What version of git are you
using (the "@{upstream}" default is in v1.7.6 and later)?

-Peff