View the change history of a file using github.com

Question

I've found this post about using the command line, but is it possible to view the file change history of a single file in a repository on github.com?

An in-browser solution would help me to better illustrate changes to team members while in meetings.

Answer 1

You can view the change history of a file by clicking on the history button, or by adding commits to the URL of the file. Here is what it looks like for a file at the Homebrew repository on GitHub:

https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/commits/master/SUPPORTERS.md

To get a line-by-line history, simply add the SHA-1 string of the commit for which you want to see the diff to the URL after the word commit, and then anchor it with the filename you are interested in. For the same file above:

https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/commit/288f001e924d5365b79c279e4478f372a04011ae#SUPPORTERS.md

Answer 2

As @BurhanKhalid say, but here explaining as a "GitHub fast guide", with URL syntax:

1. Browse your project at https://github.com/<USER>/<PROJECT> ...
2. ... then you have a URL ending with the file path: https://github.com/<USER>/<PROJECT>/blob/master/<PATH>
3. Now you have all, is only to change "blob/master" to "commits/master": https://github.com/<USER>/<PROJECT>/commits/master/<PATH>

PS: to remember "commits/master" click at the project's home in the "Commit" link.

Ops: there are a similar answer here, @TimHenigan expressed with http://github.com/<username>/<project>/commits/<branch>/<path/to/file>

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Question to GitHub developers team

Why do you not offer a direct link for this kind of browsing? We need it, like Wikipedia readers need "history" link!

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Ops, GitHub's team is listening to us?

Now (June 2014) when you browse through the folders, an icon appears, see "browse commits" above right. When you click, the tree/master URL turns commits/master.

Still missing to have the same for files, as showed here, but was an evolution.