Git log has great tools to find commits which are relevant to a file, a span, or a regex. It is also really unweildy.
Fugitive's diffing is a great tool to compare files but is defeated by git churn.
Code formatters are really good at removing git churn.
This Vim plugin assembles the pieces to do git blame's job right.
With vim-plug:
Plug 'Tarmean/Gistory'
Plug 'tpope/vim-fugitive'
Plug 'neoclide/coc.nvim', {'branch': 'release', 'do': 'yarn install --frozen-lockfile'}
:Gistoryloads all commits which affect the current file into the quickfix list in a new tab.- You always see the diff between the new and previous commit
- Navigate the quickfix list to jump to commits
- Gistory normalizes whitespace and runs lsp formatters via coc.nvim to clean up diffs
Selecting a range only shows commits that affect that range. Git tries to track how this range changed over time, so if there is too much git churn all changes will be shown.
Git pickaxe can be used with Gistory -S string. This shows commits where the number of matches of string changed - great if a code formatter made span tracking useless. To use a regex, try --pickaxe-regex. Gistory -G regex finds commits where regex matches in a diff hunk, showing commits with nearby changes even if the pattern itself wasn't changed.
Dependencies:
- fugitive
- coc.nvim
The plugin works without coc.nvim but you lose lsp based formatting which can significantly help with git churn.
The plugin has a ThreeWayMerge command to help with merges. This opens both versions and the common ancestor as diffs in three tabs:
- you & past & me
- past & me
- past & you
The opened files are named accordingly. Note that this runs code formatters and retab to normalize whitespace.
ThreeWayMerge! replaces the workspace buffer by the common ancestor, allowing quick merging with diffput and diffget.
Video example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPqTLjO88yA&feature=youtu.be
Gistory defaults to fairly aggressive diff settings to ignore whitespace with set diffopt+=hiddenoff,iblank,iwhiteeol,algorithm:histogram. Set g:gistory_skip_options to configure your own.
There are situations where e.g. trailing whitespace can affect semantics so be careful when merging.
Set g:gistory_no_format to skip the warning if you do not have coc.nvim installed. If language servers for specific languages are slow to start they can be disabled with let g:gistory_format_ft = {'hs': 0}.
The following mappings are recommended to make quickfix navigation easier:
augroup QuickFixMappings
autocmd!
autocmd BufReadPost quickfix nnoremap <buffer> <CR> <CR>
autocmd BufReadPost quickfix nnoremap <buffer> J :cnext<cr>
autocmd BufReadPost quickfix nnoremap <buffer> K :cprev<cr>
augroup end
In the :Gistory view the newer version opens on the right by default. This can be disabled by
let g:gistory#new_diff_right = 0
Fugitive's Gclog has breaks when you filter out commits which renamed/copied the file. This is a fairly niche problem, but it is fixable with the git --name-only flag at the cost of adding yet more special cases to fugitive. If this problem affects you enought ot motivate a change please open an issue!