How to Track Command History in Git

1. Use the git log Command to Track Command History in Git
2. Use the git reflog Command to Track Command History in Git

Git is among those Version Control Systems that record changes made by its developers. Through these records, we can trace all kinds of earlier commits, which teammates did what changes and at what time, know about the bugs that were produced earlier and in which releases, and many more using this technique.

Git helps us track commits over time, which helps us observe the progression and the history of the work we have done in the Git repository in the past. This history in Git is supposed to be navigated; otherwise, there is no use in keeping the history.

For this purpose, Git has two features: git reflog and git log to find the history. These commands will help us quickly navigate the history that we want to see.

In this article, we will discuss these features or commands of Git in detail below.

Use the git log Command to Track Command History in Git

git log is a handy tool that helps us review the history of everything we have done in the repository. We can use git log in various ways so that our history becomes more specific and summarized.

It helps us to view past commits so that we can observe the moves of our teammates- who did what type of activity at what time in which repository. It helps us view, list, and filter commit history using filters.

It enables us to view each git commit with its hash, the message that is linked with it, and its metadata with details.

The git log command shows the commit hash, ref ID, the commit message, author, date, other commit metadata, and if it belongs to any branch HEAD. This all is done by default as follows.

git log

We can filter the output of the git log command using various subcommands so that we can only see the information related to the research we want.

Use the git log Command to Filter Out Command History

When we need to search for any specific message from a past commit then, we will have to use the following command:

git log --grep="Cat"

The above command will find the word Cat from past commits history and display the results to the user with all the matching commits.

Use the git reflog Command to Track Command History in Git

Reference logs are also known as reflogs in Git. This command is used to keep track of updates made to the tip of the branches and other commits on the same branch of the repository.

It helps us in managing the information that has been recorded in it in the past. It helps us review the commits not referenced by any branch or tag in Git.

If we want to move back to the old state of the branch, it is possible after rewriting the history, as reflog allows us to go back there whenever we want and set the current head to it.

We can say that whatever work we do in Git is present inside the reflog. We can have access to it through reflog.

Whenever we update the tip of the branch due for any reason, reflog will add this entry into it and update the reference according to it.

The git reflog command gives us the output of the HEAD reference by default, which is used as follows:

git reflog

The git reflog command is the short form of the command listed below:

git reflog show HEAD

The above command will show us the Head reflog.

Use the git reflog Command to Show Command History

The below-mentioned command will show us the reflog for our local repository in the device.

git reflog --relative-date

The above command will show us the reflog with the desired date information (e.g., 3 weeks ago).

The following command will be executed to get the complete reflog of all the references in the past:

git reflog show --all