User guide

History Partly available

The History page shows the commits of the current branch, its stack or every reference, with a graph that draws how they connect. Select a commit to see what it changed, then open one of its files to read the diff. The page follows the repository: a commit made outside GitMaster appears at the top of the list while the page is open.

Open the history#

1. Click History in the sidebar, or run Show History from the command palette (Ctrl+K, ⌘K on macOS).
2. The page needs an open repository. If HEAD points at a branch that has no commits yet, the page says so instead of showing an empty list.

Reading the history does not add entries to the Git commands panel.

The commit list#

Each row shows one commit.

The commits are listed in topological order. The header shows the number of commits loaded: 12 commits, or First 200 commits while more pages can be loaded.

Paging#

The list loads 200 commits at a time. When you scroll near the end of the list, the next page loads from the last commit shown.

Updates#

While the page is open, the top of the list is read again whenever the repository changes. A commit that you make outside GitMaster, for example with the git command line, appears at the top. Your selection stays on the same commit.

Select a commit#

Click a row to select it. The row is highlighted and the commit details open in the panel on the right. The selection survives updates to the list.

Commit details#

The panel shows the selected commit:

Author pictures#

Git stores no pictures, so a picture is looked up on Gravatar by the hash of the person's email. The lookup is off until you run Show Author Pictures from Gravatar in the palette, because it tells a third party which emails appear in your repositories. Hide Author Pictures turns it off again. A picture is fetched once and kept in the app's config folder. While there is no picture, or when the lookup is off, a disc with the person's initials on a colour taken from the email stands in. The commit list and the diff are never held up by a lookup.

The status letters are:

• A for an added file.
• M for a modified file.
• D for a deleted file.
• R for a renamed file. The path shows old → new.

A binary file shows bin instead of line counts.

Two rules apply to the file list:

• For a merge commit, the list compares the commit with its first parent.
• For a root commit, every file is listed as added.

The list shows up to 200 files. When the commit changed more, the last line says and N more.

If no commit is selected, the panel says Select a commit to see its details. If Git cannot read the commit, the panel shows Git's message.

You can select and copy the text of the subject, body, hash, author, date and parents. File paths cannot be selected, because a click on a file opens its diff.

Open the diff of a file#

1. Click a file in the Files list of the commit details.
2. The diff of the commit opens, with the file you clicked at the top. The diffs of the other files of the commit follow it, in the same order as the list.
3. Each file has a header with its status letter, its path and the count of added and removed lines. The header above the diff shows the number of files, and the Unified | Split selector chooses the layout.

Example: see what a commit changed#

1. Open History and click a commit, such as the one with the subject you want to check.
2. Read the Files list. Each row shows a status letter, the path and the line counts, such as +4 −1, or bin for a binary file.
3. Click a file in the list. Its diff opens at the top.
4. Press Ctrl+Shift+N (⇧⌘N on macOS) to go to the next file of the commit.
5. Press Esc to return to the commit details.

The diff is read-only. It has no stage, unstage or discard controls. Lines show their numbers. The layout you choose is saved and shared with the diff of the Working Copy. For how a diff is read, see Diff and staging.

A binary file, a rename with no text changes and a mode change show a notice in place of lines. A file with more than 5,000 lines shows its first 5,000 lines, then and N more lines, not shown. When the commit changed more than 200 files, the last line of the diff says and N more files, not shown.

For the full key table, see Keyboard shortcuts.

Copy the hash or message#

The commit details have two copy controls:

• Copy, beside the hash, copies the full commit hash.
• Copy message copies the subject and the body together.

The command palette lists the same actions as Copy Commit Hash and Copy Commit Message. They need a commit selected in the history.

The commit graph#

The graph sits to the left of the subject. It draws one row per commit and one line from each commit to each of its parents.

• A lane is a line of history drawn in a column. The graph draws up to 8 columns. When a row needs more, the row shows +N, where N is the number of columns beyond the eighth.
• The commit that HEAD points at has a ring around its node.
• A lane that starts at a branch takes its color from the name of that branch. The color is the same in every session.
• The trunk branches main, master and trunk, local or remote, use a quiet color.
• The graph does not rely on color alone. Lanes sit in their own columns, and the ring marks HEAD.

As you load more pages, the graph grows with the list. A commit keeps its row when more commits are loaded below it.

Scope of the list#

The scope pill in the history header chooses which commits the list shows. Click it to pick one of these:

When the checked-out branch is in a stack, the list opens on Current stack, shown by the chip Scope: current stack. Otherwise it opens on Current branch, and Current stack is disabled with the reason. The choice lasts while the window is open. A left click on a branch in the sidebar shows that branch's commits, and does not check it out. To check the branch out, use its menu and choose Checkout Branch. See Branches.

The default branch is the branch of origin/HEAD, else the first of main, master, trunk and develop that exists.

Stacks in the graph#

The graph reads the stack metadata, never the branch names, to draw stacks:

• Each commit belongs to the branch whose recorded range contains it: from the commit the branch was based on to the branch tip. The node of a commit takes the color of the branch that owns it. A commit that no stack branch owns keeps the color of its lane.
• When a branch is behind its parent, because the parent has commits the branch does not have, the edge from the branch's first commit is dashed and amber down to the commit it was based on, or down to where it meets the line of its parent, which is drawn solid from there. The tip of the branch shows the badge N commits behind parent. A branch with no commits of its own shows only the badge.
• The dashed edge and the badge carry the state, so color is never the only signal.

Commits and Stacks modes#

The Commits | Stacks switch changes the graph: Commits shows the commits, and Stacks shows one node per branch, with its commits folded under it.

Search by content#

A search field in the history header finds commits that add or remove a text, the same way as git log -S. This is the pickaxe search. A search for a regular expression uses git log -G. The search waits briefly after you stop typing, and a new search cancels the one in progress.

File history#

The history of one file lists the commits that changed that file.

Blame#

Blame shows, for each line of a file, the commit that last changed it.

Browse files at a commit#

You can open the tree of files as they were at a commit and read any of them in the code viewer. For the code viewer, see Code navigation.