View the change history of a file using github.com

I think git-history is an alternative and good method for quickly browsing the history of files in any Git repository.

You don't need to download anything. You only need to replace some text in the URL.

Steps to do:

  1. Go to a file in GitHub (or GitLab, or Bitbucket)
  2. Replace github.com with github.githistory.xyz

There is Chrome and Firefox extensions to add an Open in Git History button on GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket so that you don't need to memorize step 2.

For more information, you can go to its GitHub page.


As @BurhanKhalid say, but here explaining as a "GitHub fast guide", with URL syntax:

  1. Browse your project at https://github.com/<USER>/<PROJECT> ...
  2. ... then you have a URL ending with the file path: https://github.com/<USER>/<PROJECT>/blob/master/<PATH>
  3. Now you have all, is only to change "blob/master" to "commits/master": https://github.com/<USER>/<PROJECT>/commits/master/<PATH>

PS: to remember "commits/master" click at the project's home in the "Commit" link.

Ops: there are a similar answer here, @TimHenigan expressed with http://github.com/<username>/<project>/commits/<branch>/<path/to/file>

Question to GitHub developers team

Why do you not offer a direct link for this kind of browsing? We need it, like Wikipedia readers need "history" link!

Ops, GitHub's team is listening to us?

Now (June 2014) when you browse through the folders, an icon appears, see "browse commits" above right. When you click, the tree/master URL turns commits/master.

Still missing to have the same for files, as showed here, but was an evolution.


You can view the change history of a file by clicking on the history button, or by adding commits to the URL of the file. Here is what it looks like for a file at the Homebrew repository on GitHub:

https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/commits/master/SUPPORTERS.md

To get a line-by-line history, simply add the SHA-1 string of the commit for which you want to see the diff to the URL after the word commit, and then anchor it with the filename you are interested in. For the same file above:

https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/commit/288f001e924d5365b79c279e4478f372a04011ae#SUPPORTERS.md

Tags:

Git

Github

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