Viewing GIT history of moved files

Question

Despite reading lots of other posts regarding GIT and moved files I still struggle to understand how to trace the full history. Doing gitk myfile as suggested

Answer 1

Use git log with both --follow and --patch which will display the log with the rename from / rename to output. And don't forget the -- before the file path.

git log --follow --patch -- path/to/file.ext

For example the history of file testdir/more-testing.txt on my system shows:

Date:   Wed Mar 18 14:48:07 2020 -0700

   renamed file

diff --git a/testdir/testing.txt b/testdir/more-testing.txt
similarity index 100%
rename from testdir/testing.txt
rename to testdir/more-testing.txt

commit feb58d3ab8e8ce940f80499df0c46e8fc8caf679
Author: Igal <redacted>
Date:   Wed Mar 18 14:47:18 2020 -0700

   moved test.txt to subdirectory and renamed

diff --git a/test.txt b/testdir/testing.txt
similarity index 100%
rename from test.txt
rename to testdir/testing.txt

commit 34c4a7cebaeb0df5afb950972d69adea6b1a7560
Author: Igal <redacted>
Date:   Wed Mar 18 14:45:58 2020 -0700

   added test.txt

diff --git a/test.txt b/test.txt
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..0527e6bd2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/test.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is a test
(END)

Answer 2

Try using the --follow option to git log:

git log --follow file.txt