On , I learnt ...
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.
