TIGMANUAL(7) Tig Manual TIGMANUAL(7)
NAME
tigmanual - text-mode interface for git
SYNOPSIS
tig [options] [revisions] [--] [paths]
tig show [options] [revisions] [--] [paths]
tig blame [options] [rev] [--] path
tig status
tig < [git command output]
DESCRIPTION
This is the manual for tig, the ncurses-based text-mode interface for git. Tig allows you to browse changes in a git repository and can
additionally act as a pager for output of various git commands. When used as a pager, it will display input from stdin and colorize it.
When browsing repositories, tig uses the underlying git commands to present the user with various views, such as summarized commit log and
showing the commit with the log message, diffstat, and the diff.
CALLING CONVENTIONS
Pager Mode
If stdin is a pipe, any log or diff options will be ignored and the pager view will be opened loading data from stdin. The pager mode can
be used for colorizing output from various git commands.
Example on how to colorize the output of git-show(1):
$ git show | tig
Git Command Options
All git command options specified on the command line will be passed to the given command and all will be shell quoted before they are
passed to the shell.
Note
If you specify options for the main view, you should not use the --pretty option as this option will be set automatically to the format
expected by the main view.
Example on how to view a commit and show both author and committer information:
$ tig show --pretty=fuller
See the section on specifying revisions for an introduction to revision options supported by the git commands. For details on specific git
command options, refer to the man page of the command in question.
THE VIEWER
The display consists of a status window on the last line of the screen and one or more views. The default is to only show one view at the
time but it is possible to split both the main and log view to also show the commit diff.
If you are in the log view and press Enter when the current line is a commit line, such as:
commit 4d55caff4cc89335192f3e566004b4ceef572521
You will split the view so that the log view is displayed in the top window and the diff view in the bottom window. You can switch between
the two views by pressing Tab. To maximize the log view again, simply press l.
Views
Various views of a repository is presented. Each view is based on output from an external command, most often git log, git diff, or git
show.
The main view
Is the default view, and it shows a one line summary of each commit in the chosen list of revisions. The summary includes commit date,
author, and the first line of the log message. Additionally, any repository references, such as tags, will be shown.
The log view
Presents a more rich view of the revision log showing the whole log message and the diffstat.
The diff view
Shows either the diff of the current working tree, that is, what has changed since the last commit, or the commit diff complete with
log message, diffstat and diff.
The tree view
Lists directory trees associated with the current revision allowing subdirectories to be descended or ascended and file blobs to be
viewed.
The blob view
Displays the file content or "blob" of data associated with a file name.
The blame view
Displays the file content annotated or blamed by commits.
The branch view
Displays the branches in the repository.
The status view
Displays status of files in the working tree and allows changes to be staged/unstaged as well as adding of untracked files.
The stage view
Displays diff changes for staged or unstanged files being tracked or file content of untracked files.
The pager view
Is used for displaying both input from stdin and output from git commands entered in the internal prompt.
The help view
Displays a quick reference of key bindings.
Browsing State and User-defined Commands
The viewer keeps track of both what head and commit ID you are currently viewing. The commit ID will follow the cursor line and change
every time you highlight a different commit. Whenever you reopen the diff view it will be reloaded, if the commit ID changed. The head ID
is used when opening the main and log view to indicate from what revision to show history.
Some of the commands used or provided by tig can be configured. This goes for some of the environment variables as well as the external
commands. These user-defined commands can use arguments that refer to the current browsing state by using one of the following variables.
Table 1. Browsing state variables
%(head) The currently viewed head ID. Defaults to HEAD
%(commit) The currently selected commit ID.
%(blob) The currently selected blob ID.
%(branch) The currently selected branch name.
%(directory) The current directory path in the tree view;
empty for the root directory.
%(file) The currently selected file.
%(ref) The reference given to blame or HEAD if
undefined.
%(revargs) The revision arguments passed on the command
line.
%(fileargs) The file arguments passed on the command line.
%(diffargs) The diff options passed on the command line.
%(prompt) Prompt for the argument value.
Title Windows
Each view has a title window which shows the name of the view, current commit ID if available, and where the view is positioned:
[main] c622eefaa485995320bc743431bae0d497b1d875 - commit 1 of 61 (1%)
By default, the title of the current view is highlighted using bold font. For long loading views (taking over 3 seconds) the time since
loading started will be appended:
[main] 77d9e40fbcea3238015aea403e06f61542df9a31 - commit 1 of 779 (0%) 5s
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
Several options related to the interface with git can be configured via environment options.
Configuration Files
Upon startup, tig first reads the system wide configuration file ({sysconfdir}/tigrc by default) and then proceeds to read the user's
configuration file (~/.tigrc by default). The paths to either of these files can be overridden through the following environment variables:
TIGRC_USER
Path of the user configuration file.
TIGRC_SYSTEM
Path of the system wide configuration file.
Repository References
Commits that are referenced by tags and branch heads will be marked by the reference name surrounded by [ and ]:
2006-03-26 19:42 Petr Baudis | [cogito-0.17.1] Cogito 0.17.1
If you want to filter what branches gets shown, say limit to only show branches named master or which starts with the jf/ prefix, you can
do it by setting the following variable:
$ TIG_LS_REMOTE="git ls-remote . master jf/*" tig
Or set the variable permanently in your environment.
TIG_LS_REMOTE
Set command for retrieving all repository references. The command should output data in the same format as git-ls-remote(1). Defaults
to:
git ls-remote .
Diff options
It is possible to alter how diffs are shown by the diff view. If for example you prefer to have commit and author dates shown as relative
dates, use:
$ TIG_DIFF_OPTS="--relative-date" tig
Or set the variable permanently in your environment.
DEFAULT KEYBINDINGS
Below the default key bindings are shown.
View Switching
Key Action
m Switch to main view.
d Switch to diff view.
l Switch to log view.
p Switch to pager view.
t Switch to (directory) tree view.
f Switch to (file) blob view.
B Switch to blame view.
H Switch to branch view.
h Switch to help view
S Switch to status view
c Switch to stage view
View Manipulation
Key Action
q Close view, if multiple views are open it will
jump back to the previous view in the view stack.
If it is the last open view it will quit. Use Q
to quit all views at once.
Enter This key is "context sensitive" depending on what
view you are currently in. When in log view on a
commit line or in the main view, split the view
and show the commit diff. In the diff view
pressing Enter will simply scroll the view one
line down.
Tab Switch to next view.
R Reload and refresh the current view.
M Maximize the current view to fill the whole
display.
Up This key is "context sensitive" and will move the
cursor one line up. However, if you opened a diff
view from the main view (split- or full-screen)
it will change the cursor to point to the
previous commit in the main view and update the
diff view to display it.
Down Similar to Up but will move down.
, Move to parent. In the tree view, this means
switch to the parent directory. In the blame view
it will load blame for the parent commit. For
merges the parent is queried.
View Specific Actions
Key Action
u Update status of file. In the status view, this
allows you to add an untracked file or stage
changes to a file for next commit (similar to
running git-add <filename>). In the stage view,
when pressing this on a diff chunk line stages
only that chunk for next commit, when not on a
diff chunk line all changes in the displayed diff
is staged.
M Resolve unmerged file by launching
git-mergetool(1). Note, to work correctly this
might require some initial configuration of your
preferred merge tool. See the manpage of
git-mergetool(1).
! Checkout file with unstaged changes. This will
reset the file to contain the content it had at
last commit.
Ctrl-u Stage single diff line.
@ Move to next chunk in the stage view.
] Increase the diff context.
[ Decrease the diff context.
Cursor Navigation
Key Action
k Move cursor one line up.
j Move cursor one line down.
PgUp,-,a Move cursor one page up.
PgDown, Space Move cursor one page down.
End Jump to last line.
Home Jump to first line.
Scrolling
Key Action
Insert Scroll view one line up.
Delete Scroll view one line down.
w Scroll view one page up.
s Scroll view one page down.
Left Scroll view one column left.
Right Scroll view one column right.
| Scroll view to the first column.
Searching
Key Action
/ Search the view. Opens a prompt for entering
search regexp to use.
? Search backwards in the view. Also prompts for
regexp.
n Find next match for the current search regexp.
N Find previous match for the current search
regexp.
Misc
Key Action
Q Quit.
r Redraw screen.
z Stop all background loading. This can be useful
if you use tig in a repository with a long
history without limiting the revision log.
v Show version.
o Open option menu
. Toggle line numbers on/off.
D Toggle date display on/off/short/relative/local.
A Toggle author display on/off/abbreviated.
g Toggle revision graph visualization on/off.
~ Toggle (line) graphics mode
F Toggle reference display on/off (tag and branch
names).
W Toggle ignoring whitespace on/off for diffs
: Open prompt. This allows you to specify what git
command to run. Example :log -p. You can also use
this to jump to a specific line by typing
:<linenumber>, e.g. :80, or jump to a specific
commit by typing :<sha>, e.g. :2f12bcc.
e Open file in editor.
External Commands
For more custom needs, external commands provide a way to easily execute a script or program. They are bound to keys and use information
from the current browsing state, such as the current commit ID. Tig comes with the following built-in external commands:
Keymap Key Action
main C git cherry-pick %(commit)
status C git commit
generic G git gc
REVISION SPECIFICATION
This section describes various ways to specify what revisions to display or otherwise limit the view to. Tig does not itself parse the
described revision options so refer to the relevant git man pages for further information. Relevant man pages besides git-log(1) are
git-diff(1) and git-rev-list(1).
You can tune the interaction with git by making use of the options explained in this section. For example, by configuring the environment
variable described in the section on diff options.
Limit by Path Name
If you are interested only in those revisions that made changes to a specific file (or even several files) list the files like this:
$ tig Makefile README
To avoid ambiguity with tig's subcommands or repository references such as tag name, be sure to separate file names from other git options
using "--". So if you have a file named status it will clash with the status subcommand, and thus you will have to use:
$ tig -- status
Limit by Date or Number
To speed up interaction with git, you can limit the amount of commits to show both for the log and main view. Either limit by date using
e.g. --since=1.month or limit by the number of commits using -n400.
If you are only interested in changed that happened between two dates you can use:
$ tig --after="May 5th" --before="2006-05-16 15:44"
Note
If you want to avoid having to quote dates containing spaces you can use "." instead, e.g. --after=May.5th.
Limiting by Commit Ranges
Alternatively, commits can be limited to a specific range, such as "all commits between tag-1.0 and tag-2.0". For example:
$ tig tag-1.0..tag-2.0
This way of commit limiting makes it trivial to only browse the commits which haven't been pushed to a remote branch. Assuming origin is
your upstream remote branch, using:
$ tig origin..HEAD
will list what will be pushed to the remote branch. Optionally, the ending HEAD can be left out since it is implied.
Limiting by Reachability
Git interprets the range specifier "tag-1.0..tag-2.0" as "all commits reachable from tag-2.0 but not from tag-1.0". Where reachability
refers to what commits are ancestors (or part of the history) of the branch or tagged revision in question.
If you prefer to specify which commit to preview in this way use the following:
$ tig tag-2.0 ^tag-1.0
You can think of ^ as a negation operator. Using this alternate syntax, it is possible to further prune commits by specifying multiple
branch cut offs.
Combining Revisions Specification
Revisions options can to some degree be combined, which makes it possible to say "show at most 20 commits from within the last month that
changed files under the Documentation/ directory."
$ tig --since=1.month -n20 -- Documentation/
Examining All Repository References
In some cases, it can be useful to query changes across all references in a repository. An example is to ask "did any line of development
in this repository change a particular file within the last week". This can be accomplished using:
$ tig --all --since=1.week -- Makefile
BUGS
Bugs and feature requests can be reported using the issue tracker at https://github.com/jonas/tig/issues or by mail to either the git
mailing list or directly to the maintainer. Ensure that the word "tig" is in the subject.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2006-2012 Jonas Fonseca <fonseca@diku.dk[1]>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
SEE ALSO
Manpages:
o tig(1)
o tigrc(5)
Online resources:
o Homepage: http://jonas.nitro.dk/tig/
o Manual: http://jonas.nitro.dk/tig/manual.html
o Tarballs: http://jonas.nitro.dk/tig/releases/
o Git URL: git://github.com/jonas/tig.git (master) or git://repo.or.cz/tig.git (mirror)
o Gitweb: http://repo.or.cz/w/tig.git
NOTES
1. fonseca@diku.dk
mailto:fonseca@diku.dk
Tig 1.0 05/10/2012 TIGMANUAL(7)