How to View the Change History of a File using Git Versioning?

Git is a widely used distributed version control and source code management system. It effectively tracks changes to source code, enabling effortless branching, merging, and versioning.

Viewing the change history of a file using Git

Step 1: Check the Current Status of Repository

It's a good practice to check the current status of the Git repository before starting to view the change history of a file.

git status

This will display the current state of the repository, including any untracked, modified, or staged files.

Step 2: View the Change History of a File

To view the change history of a particular file, use the git log command.

git log -- filename.extension

Git will only show list of commits that affected the specified file.

Step 3: View the Changes Made in a Commit

To view the changes that were made in a particular commit, we can use the git show command.

git show <commit-hash>

for me it will be like

git show 4307109352a64dcd91ebe22bd8845fb6345ff5cf

Alternative way:

git log -p -- filename

This can also be used to view the change history of a specific file in Git.

Command breakdown:

• git log: This is the base command for viewing the commit history in Git.
• -p: This option tells Git to show the diff of each commit.
• --: This option separates the commit history options from the file path.
• filename: This is the path to the file whose change history you want to view.

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Article Tags :

• Web Technologies
• Git