Question

I’m browsing a git repository.
Say I have a data structure in a file cache.h:

struct cache_entry {
    struct cache_time ctime;
    struct cache_time mtime;
    unsigned int st_dev;
    unsigned int st_ino;
    unsigned int st_mode;
    unsigned int st_uid;
    unsigned int st_gid;
    unsigned int st_size;
    unsigned char sha1[20];
    unsigned short namelen;
    unsigned char name[0];
};

How can I find all subsequent versions which contain changes on this particular data structure ?

For example, after 20 commits, the author added a new entry in the above data structure.

So basically I want to see the evolution of code on a particular data structure.

Is this possible in Git ?

Answer 1

Git pickaxe may do want you want – for example if you wanted to find every change related to st_mode

git log -Sst_mode

Basically it is a grep string as git returns any commit it finds that contains that string.

git blame may also help. This will show last commits for lines 100 to 125 in filename

git blame -L100,125 filename