git --format anyone?

[johne53]

Apologies. I just posted this as an email before noticing this discussion forum so sorry if it comes through twice...

I'm working on a project which requires me to run git --format (with various parameters of course). I'm currently running Git for Windows version 2.51.2 which looks fairly recent and if I simply type "git" it displays a list of available options - but it doesn't deem to offer an option called 'format' 🙁

I gather that the latest version is 2.53.0 so would it be worthwhile for me to upgrade? i.e. would that then offer me git --format?

[johne53]

Here's some background in case it helps... I'm trying to learn about Microsoft's software package management system called vcpkg and I'm trying to follow one of the tutorials here:-

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/vcpkg/consume/boost-versions#2---use-a-baseline-to-override-boost-packages

About half way down that page there's an example of how to find something called a baseline for one of its packages:-

git log "--format=%H %cd %s" --date=short --left-only -- versions/b-/boost-optional.json

which is followed by a description of what information it should print out. But when I tried it here, all it printed out was this:-

WARNING: terminal is not fully functional
Press RETURN to continue

However, since my original post I've realised that the command gives me different errors depending on which folder I happen to be in when I type it. So I'm assuming that this isn't in fact a problem with Git. It's more likely to be some problem within vcpkg itself : 🙁

[dscho]

WARNING: terminal is not fully functional
Press RETURN to continue

That's the "pager" being unhappy with your terminal window. Aren't you using Git Bash?

You can suppress the pager via git -P log [... options ...].

[johne53]

Many thanks @dscho - that does suppress the error but I don't see the expected output. I'm running on Windows here and using Windows Powershell to follow the instructions given here:-

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/vcpkg/consume/boost-versions#2---use-a-baseline-to-override-boost-packages

Step 1 in that article is supposed to print some information that's obtained from a file called boost-optional.json in a subfolder called versions/b- :-

git -P log "--format=%H %cd %s" --date=short --left-only -- versions/b-/boost-optional.json

The file and folders do exist and without your -P option I was getting that terminal error here but now it just doesn't print any output. I've asked on Microsoft's vcpkg forum but no-one seems to have an explanation 🙁

[Edit...] In fact git -P log -- versions/b-/boost-optional.json does seem like it's displaying the contents of versions/b-/boost-optional.json so presumably there must be something wrong with those formatting options?

[johne53]

git -P log "--format=%H %cd %s" --date=short --left-only -- versions/b-/boost-optional.json

Someone on Microsoft's vcpkg forum figured out that --left-only was causing the problem. They're not sure why exactly but this modification gives the expected output:-

git -P log "--format=%H %cd %s" --date=short -- versions/b-/boost-optional.json