NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

Displays changes in a repository or a selected set of commits. This includes
visualizing the commit graph, showing information related to each commit, and
the files in the trees of each revision.

OPTIONS

To control which revisions to show, gitk supports most options
applicable to the git rev-list command. It also supports a few
options applicable to the git diff-* commands to control how the
changes each commit introduces are shown. Finally, it supports some
gitk-specific options.

gitk generally only understands options with arguments in the
sticked form (see gitcli[7]) due to limitations in the
command-line parser.

rev-list options and arguments

This manual page describes only the most frequently used options. See
git-rev-list[1] for a complete list.

--all

Show all refs (branches, tags, etc.).

--branches[=<pattern>]

--tags[=<pattern>]

--remotes[=<pattern>]

Pretend as if all the branches (tags, remote branches, resp.)
are listed on the command line as <commit>. If <pattern>
is given, limit refs to ones matching given shell glob. If
pattern lacks ?, *, or [, /* at the
end is implied.

--since=<date>

Show commits more recent than a specific date.

--until=<date>

Show commits older than a specific date.

--date-order

Sort commits by date when possible.

--merge

After an attempt to merge stops with conflicts, show the commits on
the history between two branches (i.e. the HEAD and the MERGE_HEAD)
that modify the conflicted files and do not exist on all the heads
being merged.

--left-right

Mark which side of a symmetric diff a commit is reachable
from. Commits from the left side are prefixed with a <
symbol and those from the right with a > symbol.

--full-history

When filtering history with <path>…, does not prune some
history. (See "History simplification" in git-log[1]
for a more detailed explanation.)

--simplify-merges

Additional option to --full-history to remove some needless
merges from the resulting history, as there are no selected
commits contributing to this merge. (See "History
simplification" in git-log[1] for a more detailed
explanation.)

--ancestry-path

When given a range of commits to display
(e.g. commit1..commit2 or commit2 ^commit1), only
display commits that exist directly on the ancestry chain
between the commit1 and commit2, i.e. commits that are
both descendants of commit1, and ancestors of commit2.
(See "History simplification" in git-log[1] for a more
detailed explanation.)

-L<start>,<end>:<file>

-L:<regex>:<file>

Trace the evolution of the line range given by "<start>,<end>"
(or the funcname regex <regex>) within the <file>. You may
not give any pathspec limiters. This is currently limited to
a walk starting from a single revision, i.e., you may only
give zero or one positive revision arguments.
You can specify this option more than once.

Note: gitk (unlike git-log[1]) currently only understands
this option if you specify it "glued together" with its argument. Do
not put a space after -L.

<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 “:<regex>” is given in place of <start> and <end>, it denotes the range
from the first funcname line that matches <regex>, up to the next
funcname line. “:<regex>” searches from the end of the previous -L range,
if any, otherwise from the start of file.
“^:<regex>” searches from the start of file.

<revision range>

Limit the revisions to show. This can be either a single revision
meaning show from the given revision and back, or it can be a range in
the form "<from>..<to>" to show all revisions between <from> and
back to <to>. Note, more advanced revision selection can be applied.
For a more complete list of ways to spell object names, see
gitrevisions[7].

<path>…

Limit commits to the ones touching files in the given paths. Note, to
avoid ambiguity with respect to revision names use "--" to separate the paths
from any preceding options.

gitk-specific options

--argscmd=<command>

Command to be run each time gitk has to determine the revision
range to show. The command is expected to print on its
standard output a list of additional revisions to be shown,
one per line. Use this instead of explicitly specifying a
<revision range> if the set of commits to show may vary
between refreshes.

--select-commit=<ref>

Select the specified commit after loading the graph.
Default behavior is equivalent to specifying --select-commit=HEAD.

Examples

gitk v2.6.12.. include/scsi drivers/scsi

Show the changes since version v2.6.12 that changed any
file in the include/scsi or drivers/scsi subdirectories

gitk --since="2 weeks ago" -- gitk

Show the changes during the last two weeks to the file gitk.
The "--" is necessary to avoid confusion with the branch named
gitk

gitk --max-count=100 --all -- Makefile

Show at most 100 changes made to the file Makefile. Instead of only
looking for changes in the current branch look in all branches.

Files

User configuration and preferences are stored at:

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/gitk if it exists, otherwise

$HOME/.gitk if it exists

If neither of the above exist then $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/gitk is created and
used by default. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set it defaults to
$HOME/.config in all cases.

History

Gitk was the first graphical repository browser. It’s written in
tcl/tk and started off in a separate repository but was later merged
into the main Git repository.

SEE ALSO

qgit(1)

A repository browser written in C++ using Qt.

gitview(1)

A repository browser written in Python using Gtk. It’s based on
bzrk(1) and distributed in the contrib area of the Git repository.

tig(1)

A minimal repository browser and Git tool output highlighter written
in C using Ncurses.