How to show the history of a file with git log --patch

Am slightly embarrassed to admit it but I’ve only just discovered the --patch option to git log which shows diff information for each commit.

History of a file

It’s particular useful for inspecting the history of a single file, showing the the change that each commit made. For example, here’s how to example the changes to Django’s LICENSE file over the years:

$ git log --patch --follow -- LICENSE

which reveals:

Not possible in Github

There’s no equivalent feature to this in Github’s UI. While the “history” page for a file shows the commits that have touched it, there’s no easy way to see the diff for that file in each commit.

In Vim

This works nicely with vim-fugitive. Running :Git log -p --follow % opens the history for the current file in a split with all of Fugitive’s helpful key-binds available for traversing the commits.