Run `git log` on a remote branch

Question

I want the output of git log of a git repository but I don't want to have to clone the entire repository.

I.e. I want something semantically like the following

git log git@github.com:username/reponame.git

If there is a way to do this I'll also want the same for git whatchanged

If github provides a simple solution for this I would be willing to restrict myself to only git repositories hosted on github.

I think that would go against git being a *distributed* vcs, no? — jeremyharris, Sep 06 '12 at 00:34
possible duplicate of [Show git logs for range of commits on remote server?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5958905/show-git-logs-for-range-of-commits-on-remote-server) — jeremyharris, Sep 06 '12 at 00:34
Duplicate of [Commit history on remote repository](https://stackoverflow.com/q/13941976) — sondra.kinsey, Jan 31 '19 at 21:22

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 10 '13 at 17:13

You should fetch the remote branch then interact with it. git fetch will pull the remote branch into your local repository's FETCH_HEAD, but not your working directory.

git log FETCH_HEAD --decorate=full will let you see where your HEAD is in comparison to refs/origin/HEAD, which is the remote branch.

git whatchanged FETCH_HEAD --decorate=full is the same as above, but also shows the files that have changed.

git diff HEAD FETCH_HEAD diffs between your repository's HEAD and the remote branch's HEAD that you just fetched

git diff --stat HEAD FETCH_HEAD a summary preview of the changes, just as you would see during the merge and at the bottom of a git pull.

Note that if you do wish to pull in the fetched changes, just do a git merge FETCH_HEAD. (When you git pull you are essentially just doing a fetch then a merge)

This answer is useless wrg of the actual question asked, but I give it an upvote anyway as it solved the problem I wanted to solve when duckduckgoing for "git log remote branch" :-) — tobixen, Jun 26 '15 at 06:16

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 06 '12 at 00:42

3

You could do a shallow clone, which would limit the amount of stuff you'd have to fetch if you only need the recent history:

git clone --depth 100 ...

answered Sep 06 '12 at 00:42

Tony K.

5,535
23
27

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 20 '14 at 12:51

2

I've found two ways of doing this with GitHub:

Use the web API to query the log information (not trivial but doable)
Use "svn log", since GitHub now partially emulates an SVN server on the Git repositories

answered Nov 20 '14 at 12:51

Drealmer

5,578
3
30
37

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 06 '12 at 00:36

I think your solution is to just look at the history on the github.com website. If you need git log to work from the command-line then you need your own clone of the repository.

In theory you could write a command-line tool that pulls down commit information from github's API, but this would be restricted to showing just commit messages/metadata, and not actual diffs.

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 06 '12 at 00:47

The Unix way is to have a shell account:

ssh user@otherserver cd reponame.git '&&' git log

and

ssh user@otherserver cd reponame.git '&&' git whatchanged

This method has the advantage of running whatever you want on the remote server. I doubt this will work with github though.

Run `git log` on a remote branch

5 Answers5