How to get details of a commit in git

You can use “git show” command to get details of a commit in git. You can find the author of the commit in the output. You can also get details such as timestamp, commit number, code changes.

Let us see through a hands-on example.

Use “git branch” and “git log” to see the list of commits. The branch is called as main, and there are five commits listed.

~/repoone$ git branch
* main

~/repoone$ git log --oneline
4632c0d (HEAD -> main, origin/maincopy) Adding empty directory
908d6ac (origin/main, origin/HEAD) Third commit in main
42296d0 Second commit in main
453424e This is first commit
2673111 Initial commit

You can use “git show <commit number>” to get the details of a specific commit. This would provide the commit number, branch details, author, date, and changes in code.

~/repoone$ git show 4632c0d
commit 4632c0d520218e90d6f6645e80773d9b7e8ab0f7 (HEAD -> main, origin/maincopy)
Author: Code Version Master <codeversionmaster@gmail.com>
Date:   Sat Sep 24 13:04:50 2022 +0000

    Adding empty directory

diff --git a/dirtwo/.gitignore b/dirtwo/.gitignore
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e7d273
--- /dev/null
+++ b/dirtwo/.gitignore
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+# Ignore everything in this directory
+*
+# Except this file
+!.gitignore

You can add extra filters to the same command to get specific fields such as Author.

~/repoone$ git show 4632c0d | grep Author
Author: Code Version Master <codeversionmaster@gmail.com>