Git changelog: how to get all changes up to a specific tag?

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