Get last commit date of file

Posted on 15 Nov, 2020

git log --follow -p -- filename

This by default renders the diffed version history of the file over time. This can be suppressed by -q flag after that we can use awk to look for pattern Date.

git log --follow -q -- README.md | awk '/Date/ { print $4,$3,$6 }'

This will grab the date of each commit which modified this file!

14 Nov 2020
11 Nov 2020
11 Nov 2020
7 Nov 2020
...

Here is simple script that will list last commit date of each file inside a git repo.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Utility to list last commit date of each file in a git repo

[[ ! -d ".git" ]] && echo -e "Not a git repo" && exit 1

for file in $(du --exclude='.git' -a . | awk '{ print $2 }'); do
    if [[ -f "${file:2}" ]]; then
        commit_date=$(git log --follow -q -- "${file:2}" | awk '/Date/ { print $4,$3,$6 }' | head -1)
        [[ "$commit_date" ]] && printf "%12s : %s\n" "$commit_date" "${file:2}"
    fi
done