Re: git log question

[Stephen Berman <stephen.berman@gmx.net>]

Thanks for all the instructive responses.  The magit and gitk displays
contain the information I want, but also much more than I want, and gitk
takes rather long to load, in addition to not being inside emacs (magit
I have yet to try).  I've actually been using an Elisp command I defined
some time ago, but it didn't show the branches (because, as I mentioned
in my OP, I had (wrongly) assumed that `git log' only show commits on
the "branch" it is invoked on); I've now revised it to do that.  Here it
is, for anyone who's interested:

(defun srb-git-log (&optional repo commit)
  "Check REPO for COMMIT and if it exists, display its commit message.
Interactively, prompt for REPO, defaulting to emacs-master, and
for COMMIT, defaulting to the commit hash at point."
  (interactive "p")
  (let* ((git-dir (if repo
		      (read-directory-name "Repo: " "/mnt/data/steve/git/"
					   nil t "emacs-master")
		    "/mnt/data/steve/git/emacs-master"))
	 (commit0 (or commit (read-string "Commit: " nil nil (word-at-point))))
	 (default-directory git-dir)
	 (output-buffer (get-buffer-create "*git log*"))
	 (proc (progn
		 (with-current-buffer output-buffer (erase-buffer))
		 (call-process "git" nil output-buffer nil
			       "branch" "--contains" commit0))))
    (when proc
      (with-current-buffer output-buffer
	(goto-char (point-min))
	(unless (looking-at "[ *]")
	  (user-error "%s is not on branch %s" commit0
		      (file-name-base git-dir)))
	(insert "Branches:\n")
	(goto-char (point-max))
	(call-process "git" nil output-buffer nil "log" "-1" commit0)
	(pop-to-buffer output-buffer)))))

Steve Berman