How to use git as a standup tool

Git helps you to track what's being done in the repo

If you are working on several repos or in a large team on a daily basis then keep tracking what is being done and who is working on which feature can be something daunting.

But fortunately, Git helps us to track the changes in the repo so that you view this information in simple commands.

Using git shortlog

Git shortlog is similar to git log but the commits will be grouped by author and title.

For example,

git shortlog

In the above image, you can see that the git logs are grouped by author name and with the number of commit numbers.

This helps you to see which author has worked on which commit.

Using date range

Shortlog comes with numerous options. One of the most important options is using a date range.

git shortlog --after="1 week ago" --before="1 day"

—after include commits more recent than the date.

—before include commits older than the date.

You can use other options of date as well

git shortlog --after="yesterday"  git shortlog --after="today"  git shortlog --after="10 days ago"  git shortlog --after="1 week ago"

Using the commit range

Sometimes you need to look for the history in the specified commit range.

git shortlog A..B  git shortlog 143fd1fa..9215d04f

Remember that A commit hash should be older than commit hash B

Filter by files

Shortlog also provides an option to filter by only specified files.

git shortog -- one.txt

The above option will filter commits that contain changes from the specified file.

git shortlog -- one.txt two.txt three.txt

You can also specify multiple files.

Formatting git shortlog

You can also use the formatting options for shortlog. The format options are the same as the git log.

Usage

git shortlog --pretty=format:"%an - %ar%n  %h - %s %n"

You can view other format options here

Git standup

To make things easier, there is a tool called git-standup

Git standup is an open-source tool that helps you to track what you have been working on and what your team has been working on. It comes with various options that you can play with it.

That’s it for today :)

Thank you for reading

See you next week :) :)