git-annotate(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON

GIT-ANNOTATE(1)                Git Manual                GIT-ANNOTATE(1)

NAME         top

       git-annotate - Annotate file lines with commit information

SYNOPSIS         top

       git annotate [<options>] [<rev-opts>] [<rev>] [--] <file>

DESCRIPTION         top

       Annotates each line in the given file with information from the
       commit which introduced the line. Optionally annotates from a
       given revision.

       The only difference between this command and git-blame(1) is that
       they use slightly different output formats, and this command
       exists only for backward compatibility to support existing
       scripts, and provide a more familiar command name for people
       coming from other SCM systems.

OPTIONS         top

       -b
           Show blank SHA-1 for boundary commits. This can also be
           controlled via the blame.blankBoundary config option.

       --root
           Do not treat root commits as boundaries. This can also be
           controlled via the blame.showRoot config option.

       --show-stats
           Include additional statistics at the end of blame output.

       -L <start>,<end>, -L :<funcname>
           Annotate only the line range given by <start>,<end>, or by
           the function name regex <funcname>. May be specified multiple
           times. Overlapping ranges are allowed.

           <start> and <end> are optional.  -L <start> or -L <start>,
           spans from <start> to end of file.  -L ,<end> spans from
           start of file to <end>.

           <start> and <end> can take one of these forms:

           •   number

               If <start> or <end> is a number, it specifies an absolute
               line number (lines count from 1).

           •   /regex/

               This form will use the first line matching the given
               POSIX regex. If <start> is a regex, it will search from
               the end of the previous -L range, if any, otherwise from
               the start of file. If <start> is ^/regex/, it will search
               from the start of file. If <end> is a regex, it will
               search starting at the line given by <start>.

           •   +offset or -offset

               This is only valid for <end> and will specify a number of
               lines before or after the line given by <start>.

           If :<funcname> is given in place of <start> and <end>, it is
           a regular expression that denotes the range from the first
           funcname line that matches <funcname>, up to the next
           funcname line.  :<funcname> searches from the end of the
           previous -L range, if any, otherwise from the start of file.
           ^:<funcname> searches from the start of file. The function
           names are determined in the same way as git diff works out
           patch hunk headers (see Defining a custom hunk-header in
           gitattributes(5)).

       -l
           Show long rev (Default: off).

       -t
           Show raw timestamp (Default: off).

       -S <revs-file>
           Use revisions from revs-file instead of calling
           git-rev-list(1).

       --reverse <rev>..<rev>
           Walk history forward instead of backward. Instead of showing
           the revision in which a line appeared, this shows the last
           revision in which a line has existed. This requires a range
           of revision like START..END where the path to blame exists in
           START.  git blame --reverse START is taken as git blame
           --reverse START..HEAD for convenience.

       --first-parent
           Follow only the first parent commit upon seeing a merge
           commit. This option can be used to determine when a line was
           introduced to a particular integration branch, rather than
           when it was introduced to the history overall.

       -p, --porcelain
           Show in a format designed for machine consumption.

       --line-porcelain
           Show the porcelain format, but output commit information for
           each line, not just the first time a commit is referenced.
           Implies --porcelain.

       --incremental
           Show the result incrementally in a format designed for
           machine consumption.

       --encoding=<encoding>
           Specifies the encoding used to output author names and commit
           summaries. Setting it to none makes blame output unconverted
           data. For more information see the discussion about encoding
           in the git-log(1) manual page.

       --contents <file>
           Annotate using the contents from the named file, starting
           from <rev> if it is specified, and HEAD otherwise. You may
           specify - to make the command read from the standard input
           for the file contents.

       --date <format>
           Specifies the format used to output dates. If --date is not
           provided, the value of the blame.date config variable is
           used. If the blame.date config variable is also not set, the
           iso format is used. For supported values, see the discussion
           of the --date option at git-log(1).

       --[no-]progress
           Progress status is reported on the standard error stream by
           default when it is attached to a terminal. This flag enables
           progress reporting even if not attached to a terminal. Can’t
           use --progress together with --porcelain or --incremental.

       -M[<num>]
           Detect moved or copied lines within a file. When a commit
           moves or copies a block of lines (e.g. the original file has
           A and then B, and the commit changes it to B and then A), the
           traditional blame algorithm notices only half of the movement
           and typically blames the lines that were moved up (i.e. B) to
           the parent and assigns blame to the lines that were moved
           down (i.e. A) to the child commit. With this option, both
           groups of lines are blamed on the parent by running extra
           passes of inspection.

           <num> is optional but it is the lower bound on the number of
           alphanumeric characters that Git must detect as
           moving/copying within a file for it to associate those lines
           with the parent commit. The default value is 20.

       -C[<num>]
           In addition to -M, detect lines moved or copied from other
           files that were modified in the same commit. This is useful
           when you reorganize your program and move code around across
           files. When this option is given twice, the command
           additionally looks for copies from other files in the commit
           that creates the file. When this option is given three times,
           the command additionally looks for copies from other files in
           any commit.

           <num> is optional but it is the lower bound on the number of
           alphanumeric characters that Git must detect as
           moving/copying between files for it to associate those lines
           with the parent commit. And the default value is 40. If there
           are more than one -C options given, the <num> argument of the
           last -C will take effect.

       --ignore-rev <rev>
           Ignore changes made by the revision when assigning blame, as
           if the change never happened. Lines that were changed or
           added by an ignored commit will be blamed on the previous
           commit that changed that line or nearby lines. This option
           may be specified multiple times to ignore more than one
           revision. If the blame.markIgnoredLines config option is set,
           then lines that were changed by an ignored commit and
           attributed to another commit will be marked with a ?  in the
           blame output. If the blame.markUnblamableLines config option
           is set, then those lines touched by an ignored commit that we
           could not attribute to another revision are marked with a *.

       --ignore-revs-file <file>
           Ignore revisions listed in file, which must be in the same
           format as an fsck.skipList. This option may be repeated, and
           these files will be processed after any files specified with
           the blame.ignoreRevsFile config option. An empty file name,
           "", will clear the list of revs from previously processed
           files.

       --color-lines
           Color line annotations in the default format differently if
           they come from the same commit as the preceding line. This
           makes it easier to distinguish code blocks introduced by
           different commits. The color defaults to cyan and can be
           adjusted using the color.blame.repeatedLines config option.

       --color-by-age
           Color line annotations depending on the age of the line in
           the default format. The color.blame.highlightRecent config
           option controls what color is used for each range of age.

       -h
           Show help message.

SEE ALSO         top

       git-blame(1)

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-20.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

Git 2.43.0.174.g055bb6         2023-12-20                GIT-ANNOTATE(1)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)git-blame(1)