viewlog 1.1.3

terminal git log browser

viewlog is a command line tool to browse historical versions of files stored using git, and open it with vim (or graphical vim).

More technically, viewlog is a terminal based git log browser that allows you to cycle through all your git commits. On selection, it will open that version of file in vim (or graphical vim). Here is a sample screen:

$ viewlog rmed
 Pick your git commit id

 => 20000e5e59270e99bc134b9acade8c722cc410de - 34 hours ago, rouble blessed the code thusly: kitchen sink
    8c0d5009b69afeca06333b8efd3a4690b92f64f5 - 34 hours ago, rouble blessed the code thusly: major architectural changes
    f8b2265944f10a4de3de3113bdb654b22c4fb65f - 34 hours ago, rouble blessed the code thusly: Preparing for FCS
    ae45df5ea466778a62da394370854ed49833696a - 35 hours ago, rouble blessed the code thusly: what me worry?
    eafce9c6d5e742c59da35daeaffdd681a9ba8d14 - 35 hours ago, rouble blessed the code thusly: rewrote from scratch again
    0f2d343409a843b14861d385fd000440eb1360ca - 35 hours ago, rouble blessed the code thusly: rewrote from scratch
    5e61aa5dce263bdfd6adf0a3bca34d9ab66fbf08 - 2 days ago, rouble blessed the code thusly: would you believe, more features?
    e1a61f877c085dd79b863c0664007fc2c9880bda - 2 days ago, chuck norris blessed the code thusly: more features again
    8b10be72399c66a51462e7c8cd801b726ea6bab9 - 2 days ago, jackie chan blessed the code thusly: even more features
    f1711513272d8e1dda0db73f1f491c7a575c2f91 - 3 days ago, rajnikant blessed the code thusly: More features
    next page
    exit

Obligatory animated gif:

Hat tip

Hat tip to Wong2 for the pick library that was used for the curses picker implementation.

Motivation

I know there are lots of git gui’s out there. But I like terminals. Maybe I am oldschool. I was getting by with this bash function for a while:

vimgitshow() { git show "$1" | vim - "+set filetype=${1##*.}"; }

… but then I decided to slap some code together and browse the history and use vim to open the files.

Usage

usage: viewlog [-h] [-e EDITOR] [-s SKIP] [-l LIMIT] [-f LOGFORMAT] filename

terminal git log browser

positional arguments:
  filename              Path to filename

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -e EDITOR, --editor EDITOR
                        Editor to use
  -s SKIP, --skip SKIP  Starting commit offset
  -l LIMIT, --limit LIMIT
                        Total commits to show
  -f LOGFORMAT, --logformat LOGFORMAT
                        Pretty format for git commit

Install

$ pip install viewlog

or

$ git clone https://github.com/roubles/viewlog
$ cd viewlog
$ python setup.py install

Note that viewlog is dependent on the pypi package ‘pick’. If it doesn’t automatically get installed, you need to:

$ pip install pick

Custom editor

The default editor is vim, but that can be changed.

$ viewlog <filename> --editor [vi|mvim|gvim]

The operating system emacs is not supported, mostly because I can’t get it to read from stdin.

Custom log line

$ viewlog README.md --logformat "%h - %ad, %an: %s"
 Pick your git commit id

 => 1e283cf - Sun Jan 24 00:58:41 2016 -0500, roubles: killed it.
    8bba27e - Sun Jan 24 00:57:52 2016 -0500, roubles: vim ftw!
    5be85d5 - Sun Jan 24 00:55:28 2016 -0500, roubles: All your base are belong to us.
    cbf5d8e - Sun Jan 24 00:48:13 2016 -0500, roubles: Will it blend?
    edaceb1 - Sun Jan 24 00:45:01 2016 -0500, roubles: Update README.md
    918166c - Sun Jan 24 00:34:54 2016 -0500, rouble: initial commit
    exit