Git relative revision numbers

Question

Is it possible (somehow) to have in Git (local) relative revision (commit) numbers, like in Mercurial 0, 1, 2, 3, ... instead of short hashes?

Answer 1

Just use:

• master~10 to get the 10th last commit on branch master.
• master^ to get the second last commit on branch master.
• master^^ to get the third last commit on branch master.

They can even be combined: master^^~5^.

master can be any branch name (local or remote) or HEAD to reference the current commit.

You can use master^2 to get the second merge parent.

Answer 2

I just made something doing exactly this: dash-r. It's still rough, but you might find it useful.

Basically, it's a shim that can produce a modified version of the basic git log with commit lines like so:

commit 4  id: a4d0892d38f4d72902e35a5b1ca11e602fffcef6

and then reference these numbers by surrounding the -r invocation with backticks:

git diff `-r 2`

(Assuming you install it in your path with the name "-r". I do that since it looks like a regular option if I ignore the backticks.)

It can even handle ranges and negative numbers:

git diff `-r 2..-2`

Git's lack of revision numbers has been a major hurdle for me in warming to Git. Seeing SHA hashes in git log breaks my flow. So I hope it will help both of us.

Answer 3

Short answer: No. Yes.

However, you could use git-tag. For example, to tag your latest commit as version 1.2 do something like:

git tag -a v1.2 HEAD

This page explains how to use it for versioning: http://grinninggecko.com/commit-version-numbers-with-git/

Answer 4

You can always refer to a commit by using a prefix of its SHA-1 hash, as long as it is unique. E.g., if you want to checkout 980e3ccdaac54a0d4de358f3fe5d718027d96aae, you can use git checkout 980e as long as no other commits start with 980e.