Grep all commits in a repository

Question

I have a git repository of a rather large software project. I'd like to search every single commit message for a certain substring. I'm not looking for just the commits on the current branch, but every single commit that the repository is aware of.

The results do not have to be in any particular order(though if there was some order, it would be great). Is this possible? How can I go about doing this? I see that "git log -c -S " is useful, but that seems to work for on the current branch.

Any suggestions or help would be appreciated!

Answer 1

To search the commit log (across all branches) for the given text:

git log --all --grep='Build 0051'

To search the actual content of commits through a repo's history, use:

git grep 'Build 0051' $(git rev-list --all)

to show all instances of the given text, the containing file name, and the commit sha1.

Finally, as a last resort in case your commit is dangling and not connected to history at all, you can search the reflog itself with the -g flag (short for --walk-reflogs:

git log -g --grep='Build 0051'

EDIT: if you seem to have lost your history, check the reflog as your safety net. Look for Build 0051 in one of the commits listed by

git reflog

You may have simply set your HEAD to a part of history in which the 'Build 0051' commit is not visible, or you may have actually blown it away. The git-ready reflog article may be of help.

To recover your commit from the reflog: do a git checkout of the commit you found (and optionally make a new branch or tag of it for reference)

git checkout 77b1f718d19e5cf46e2fab8405a9a0859c9c2889
# alternative, using reflog (see git-ready link provided)
# git checkout HEAD@{10}
git checkout -b build_0051 # make a new branch with the build_0051 as the tip.