Question

Is there an easy way or command to get all git commits up to a specific tag to generate an automatic changelog for a project? I always tag my git repos with a version number like v0.1.0 and for instance would like all commits up to tag v0.1.0.

I’ve looked through the docs but don’t seem to find a useful option or command for it: http://git-scm.com/docs/git-log (is down at the moment by the way)

For instance:

$ git log --oneline --decorate

Shows the tags next to commits. I’d like the same, but only up to specific tag.

Answer 1

You can just do:

git log --oneline --decorate v0.1.0

… to show every commit up to and including v0.1.0. Of course, git log allows also allows you to restrict the commits shown in any of the ways that git rev-list understands, so if you only wanted to see the changes between v0.0.9 and v0.1.0 you could also do:

git log --oneline --decorate v0.0.9..v0.1.0

Alternative output that might be useful for this purpose is that of git shortlog, which groups and summarizes the contributions of each author. Try, for example:

git shortlog v0.1.0