View change log for a single file?

[Tai Lee]

I used to do this a lot in Cornerstone when I was working with SVN. Select a single file and then view the log. It would show me only changesets that affected the selected file, so I could quickly find out when a change was introduced and the surrounding context.

I can't find any way to do this in SourceTree. I've tried using blame on the file, then opening the changeset for the line I'm interested in, but once I do this I can't find any way to go back further into the history. When the actual change I'm interested in wasn't introduced in the most recent change to that line (e.g. subsequent unrelated changes, or code style changes), it makes it difficult to step back any further and find the change I'm interested in.

Am I just missing something in SourceTree, or Git itself that?

[KieranA · Accepted solution]

Hi Tai,

The "Log Selected" option does just that. When looking at a commit, select the file, context click and hit "Log Selected". This works in both Git and Mercurial. (Correct me if I'm misinterpreting your post, though!)

Cheers!

[Jan Zaloudek]

And is it possible to log file without needing to look for commit? Just view log of some random file from repository.

[Bruce Bowers]

I have this same question.

[dougxc]

Me too. This is a very common activity and I'm surprised to see it's not a first class feature of the interface.

[sah2ed]

Would like to add my voice to the question asked by @Jan Zaloudek. Viewing a file's history, independent of commits, is a common activity so when will this feature make it into the next release of SourceTree?

[Lawrence Dol]

Ditto to every one else. It's very common to want to see the changes to a specific file. Looking for a commit with the file is difficult and time consuming, especially if it's not been altered for some time.

[Lawrence Dol]

Also LogSelected seems to limit the file to 100 changes/lines only so sometimes the changes are not all visible.

[Brendan Levy]

Piling on. Would love to see this feature as well. We use Git for some non-code (documentation) projects as well and this would really satisfy our needs and is something surprisingly hard to find across the entire Git space.

[damiensawyer]

... me too!! Very common workflow.

[Andrew Finlay]

Why does it only log a files commits that occurred before the particular commit that you chose to log, even though there are newer commits available for that file on that branch? Is this intentional behaviour?

[Ray Smets]

+1. Checking out the change history of any particular file would be awesome!

[Lawrence Dol]

All, see my answer. Just make a temporary change to the file you want to log.

[David Gunderman]

That's a workaround, not a solution.

[Brian]

I agree that this would be very beneficial.  I should not have to make a bogus checkin, even if not pushed to look at the log for a file.

[Henrique Rodrigues]

+1. "git log <file>" is a very important basic feature. It would be nice to see it implemented in SourceTree.

[Marijn van der Zaag]

+1

[vesper8]

+1 Can Atlassian acknowledge this issue?? Shouldn't be hard to add this feature!

[dan moseley]

+1. I make a temporary edit to do this.

[Quentin Stafford-Fraser]

See my response below if you don't want to have to make a temporary edit.

[intari]

+1

[kyle_delaney]

SourceTree shows a ... when there are a lot of changes. How do I see past that? How do I view the full log of a file in a single commit?

[François Coupal]

I concur. I very often dig to find WHERE a particular file as changed, and why.

[Thiếu tá Phạm Xuân Bách]

+1. Five years after the question, is this feature added to sourcetree?

[Leanid Mendzeleu]

+1

[jeffersonbomfim]

I need this

[Felix Vaks]

This issue was fixed as described below and it was working perfectly to go to "File Status" and right click on the file with "log selected".  However I just installed the new Sourcetree version 3.1.3 and the option doesn't work anymore.  This is very important for our team.  Does anybody else have this issue or workaround?

[Евгений Борисов]

Thanks for this dialogue, from it I learned about this function.

This feature works fine for me in version 3.2.6

Select from the main menu: View => File Status View => select in filter combo-box "All" (instead of Pending files, for example) => select the desired file => Select "Log selected..." in the context menu.

[Jeana Talle]

Cool. I now consider this to be the best answer. Thanks!

[Quentin Stafford-Fraser · Accepted solution]

If you go to the 'File Status' view and change the pulldown which selects which files are visible -- it's normally on 'Pending' – to 'All files, sorted by path', then you can see everything whether or not it has a pending change.

You can then right-click on a file and do 'Log Selected'.

(This works on the Mac, anyway... can't speak for Windows)

[Bruce Bowers]

Works for me on Windows. Thank you!

[Robert Jurado]

Excellent, just what I needed.  A little complicated for a very common task

[ccyeh0901]

Thanks very much, exactly what i need!!

[Hamish Fawns]

How about files I deleted ages ago?

[adarshmadrecha]

Perfect.

[Dave Sky]

This is some odd terminology for the commit history of a file (like "Annotate Selected" for "Blame"), and I initially saw the option but did not click it because I thought it literally does what it said in some SourceTree way, like "write some kind of log thing for this file".

I'm coming from command-line and Git Extensions in Windows, and the latter follows the terminology closely to Git documentation and intuitiveness, but SourceTree seems to be making their own terms and phrases for common things.

I don't understand; am I missing something here? Is SourceTree doing it right and everyone else is wrong, or does it need to improve its terminology and intuitiveness?

[Jesper den Boer]

Thanks! I didn't know this.

[Dave Sky]

I learned later that git-annotate was the command before git-blame caused it to be deprecated; why SourceTree uses the old term, I don't know.

[Itay Alon]

thanks man ! 

[gleung86]

Hi,

I am using SourceTree 1.6.14 on Windows.  I noticed the "Log Selected" feature only shows changes for the branch you are currently on.  Not sure if I'm the only one who would like this feature, but is there (or will there be) a way to view changes of a single file that occurred on all branches as well?  Basically the same as the SourceTree Log/History revision graph, but for a single file?

Thanks,

Gerald

[Lawrence Dol]

See my answer. You can just make a temporary change to the file.

[gleung86]

Hi Lawrence, 

I'm not sure if I completely understand your solution, but I would like a full revision graph of a single file across ALL branches, not just the current branch I've currently checked out.  I've tried your method, but after making a temporary change to the file and then performing "Log Selected" it still just s

[Lawrence Dol]

@Gerald Leung: Then my solution won't help. You'll only be able to see changes that have been merged at some point into the branch you are on. Sorry, man.

[Andrew Hardy]

@Gerald

I have the same issue. My use case is that:

I find and fix an issue in a current branch of work and realize that I want to put that change into production as a hotfix.

I create a branch from the tagged release and then want to view *all* the history of the affected file so that I can cherry-pick the change into the hotfix branch.

Currently (2.0.20.1) once I'm in my hotfix branch and 'log selected' the history of the affected file doesn't include from 'then' to 'now' which is required to allow me to identify and cherry-pick the relevant commit(s).

[Siva Sundararaj]

It works fine. Go to "Log/History" tab and select "All files" and use any sort. It shows all the files irrespective of selected commit. You can then right click on the file and select "Log selected" to see history of changes.

[Deleted user]

Sorry to all the guys at Atlassian who have to review these posts, but I too would love to see this feature.  It would be my No 1 feature by a long way.

Best workaround I have found for anyone using Visual Studio is to enable Git as the source provider.  It sits nicely alongside SourceTree (neither seems to upset the other), and viewing a file's history in Visual Studio is simply a right-click away.  I use it all the time.

[Ray Smets]

Simplest way to do this:

On the command line in your project directory use the command 

git log --follow <filename>

Then use the SHA-1 hash to use the commit search feature in Source Tree (upper right corner). From there you can simply click "Log Selected".

[Lawrence Dol]

Where <filename> is the full relative path from the project root.

[Lawrence Dol]

Right clicking on any file and selecting "Log Selected" is what you want to do.

But usually the challenge is to find a commit containing the file you want to track. The trick is to make a dummy edit to the file, and it'll show up in your Working Copy. From there you can right-click and log it (be sure to follow renames, since it seems to quickly get lost otherwise, even when no renames are involved, at least on the Windows version).

When you're done just revert your dummy change.

[Leandro Barbosa]

[Theepranai.sos]

Can it help you?

[mathagician]

There are useful plugins for popular editors like sublime, pycharm, vscode etc. also to make the life easier.

[KenK]

One other critical issue here is that the Log viewer doesn't provide a full list of changes, it seems to cut off after displaying the first 30 or so changes. That makes it impossible to review changes via Sourcetree.

[coto]

way to Hide this option man!

[damiensawyer]

That's a good workaround Lawrence.
I think that what's missing with SourceTree is a control displaying the full working directory as it was at any given commit.  Git Extensions does this (https://sourceforge.net/projects/gitextensions/). It's the killer feature that I would love to see SourceTree take on.

[gleung86]

I'm using "Custom Action" to launch Git Extension File History feature to do this.  It's better, but the revision graph doesn't show which branch the file belongs to.  Have you, by any chance looked into how to figure out the originating branch of an individual file in the Git Extension File History revision graph?