Four command line GIT utilities: pr_blame, pr_log, pr_csdiff, pr_hist

Three of these programs are terminal wrappers around standard GIT utilities that colorize and reformat somewhat their outputs:

• pr_blame can show a file's content with lines colored by author, or by date (where a rainbow is used to categorize the age of each line, from dark blue being old code and bright red being recent code).

• pr_log can show the GIT log where each log entry is colorized such that each author has his/her own color. For each entry a list of modified files can also be shown color coded for Modified, Added, Deleted.

• pr_csdiff is a wrapper around GIT diff, but delegating the report creation to the csdiff utility (available at http://github.com/prioux/csdiff). It allows comparing files and entire directory subtrees using side-by-side, colorized diff.

The fourth utility ties them all together:

• pr_hist is an interactive tool to explore a GIT project; with single keystroke on a simple command prompt, one can move about the project, and launch the other three utilities and more. Easy to use, with a built-in help.

Screenshots

• pr_blame Here we see the output of git-pr_blame -Ca somefile.rb | less -R, where lines are color-coded by author names.

• pr_blame Here is the same file, seen through git-pr_blame -Cr somefile.rb | less -R, and the lines are now color-coded by age.

• pr_log Browsing the logs of a project using git-pr_log -v . | less -R. Notice that log entries are colored by author, and within each entry, a list of files is shown, with their modifications activity also color-coded.

• pr_csdiff In this screenshot, the user is comparing the changes between two particular revisions, but only within a subdirectory of the project. The command was something like git-pr_csdiff -ra22ca:ff28ae -C3 helpers | less -R.

• pr_hist This one's an interactive tool; the screenshot shows (part of) what the user obtained after typing h (for help) and l (for log) at the particular commit 23c61c.

Installation

Just copy the scripts to your favorite bin directory; you do have a $HOME/bin configured in your $PATH, I hope?

The file bash_aliases.md contains a few examples on how to add useful bash shortcuts to these commands, so you won't have to remember all their options. It contains a nice cheatsheet for those shortcuts.

Note about the first invocation of pr_blame and pr_log

These two programs will create, when first run, a file called $HOME/.pr_tools_prefs.pl ; this file is a place where you can configure your own preferences for coloring things in these utilities. The two programs will not work until you edit this preference file and remove three lines near the top (follow the instructions in it). Below that is a Perl hash table were you can put your favorite colors for your GIT authors. The programs will work fine any without specific colors assigned for the authors, but then they will choose the colors themselves, and so they might change from day to day.

These two programs are also invoked by pr_hist, so this configuration step (and the accompanying message) might happen to you while using it too.

History

These were all old wrapper scripts, written probably around 2006 (for subversion!) by Pierre Rioux and privately maintained (and upgraded to support GIT) until their release on GitHub in August 2015.

The code stinks a bit, but it's quite stable and has been working flawlessly on Mac OS X and Linux platforms ever since it was created.