git: list all files with owner/identity at first commit (or rather, the first user to commit the file)

Give this a try:

$ cd thatdirectory
$ git ls-files |
  while read fname; do
    echo "`git log --reverse --format="%cn" "$fname" | head -1` first added $fname"
  done

The "first added" can be misleading in case of renames.

Refs:

• https://git-scm.com/docs/git-ls-files
• https://git-scm.com/docs/git-log#_pretty_formats (see placeholders under format:<string>)

A very straightforward approach would be

git rev-list --objects --all |
    cut -d' ' -f2- |
    sort -u |
    while read name; do 
         git --work-tree=. log --reverse --format="%cn%x09$name" -- "$name" | head -n1
    done

Caveats:

• This shows the first author name (%an) of each path that exists in the object database (not just in (any) current revision). You may also want the committer name (%cn), though be aware that if person B rebased a commit from person A that created the file, B will be the committer and A will be the author.

• The --all flag signifies that you want all objects on all branches. To limit scope, replace it by the name of the branch/tag or just by HEAD

• n² performance (doesn't scale well for very large repo's)

• improper output if the pathname contains formatting sequences (e.g. %H etc.)

It will start out with the empty name, which is the root tree object.

I happened to run into a similar situation. The accepted answer is working, but why don't you guys use find with working copy?

find . -type f -exec git log --reverse --format="{} %cn" -1 {} \;