Git: Count commits since tag

Question

I am trying to count the number of commits since a tag was made.

I have tried using git rev-list but it seems to return the same results no matter what I try. This is what I have tried:

$ git rev-list 1.7Start^..HEAD | wc -l
13902
$ git rev-list HEAD | wc -l
13902

Trying to count how many commits since the 1.7Start tag was created. I'm currently on master hence using HEAD but using git rev-list master | wc -l gives me the same.

There hasn't been 13000+ commits since 1.7

Should git rev-list master show me every commit in master and hence yield a larger number than 1.7Start^..master which should just give me the difference?

Answer 1

The results that you're getting suggest that there is no history in common between 1.7Start^ and HEAD, so 1.7Start and HEAD must have different root commits. (The syntax a..b when passed to git rev-list just means "every commit in b which isn't in a.)

In the comments above, the questioner indicated that this arose because the repository was migrated from Subversion, and master is entirely distinct from the imported branch that 1.7Start points to.

Answer 2

Git has git rev-list --count which does this faster then wc-l.

There is also the git rev-list --use-bitmap-index --count in later versions of git, which is an optimization of --count.

rev-list needs a commit, so an example, to find all the commits in your repo for your current branch.

git rev-list --count HEAD