Git history is a bit annoying to navigate, but that may just be a tooling issue....

ffsm8 · 2026-09-22T22:13:33

Gits data structure already allows for that, as you can add additional data to a commit after it was made.

You'd consequently only need to implement your custom git gui and extension to visualize this information.

Maybe a good project for the next weekend? Just eg make a prototype tui in golang and see where you end up

jamietanna · 2026-09-23T07:16:35

I've definitely seen at least one tool in the past - maybe via simonw - to use `git notes` to track that

michaelmure · 2026-09-23T07:43:50

I want to do something like that with git-bug (keeping track of prompt/conversation/review alongside normal commit), but unsure what the DX would be. Insights welcome :)

chapterjason · 2026-09-23T07:51:15

You literally described git blame usage in almost every editor which supports git properly.

aDyslecticCrow · 2026-09-23T17:02:31

Yes and no. Git blame is great yes, but it's still rather crude. If three commits changed one condition; it only shows the top commit. Getting a full sense of the history of a function over time is far less ergonomic.

The tech and data-structure is there; but the common UX is not quite expressing the data in a sophisticated manner. It doesn't help that the default diff algorithm is rather crude as-well.

mschuster91 · 2026-09-23T10:00:14

git blame falls apart on someone running a new linter config across the project or doing some refactoring work.

bulatb · 2026-09-23T14:24:43

Some tools will automatically ignore commits in a .git-blame-ignore-revs file. Git itself can "blame --ignore-rev <hash>" or "blame --ignore-revs-file <file>" since version 2.23.

  git commit -m "Autoformat source files"
  git log --format="# %s%n%H" -1 >> .git-blame-ignore-revs
  git add .git-blame-ignore-revs
  git commit -m "Ignore autoformat commit in blames"

  cat .git-blame-ignore-revs
  # Autoformat source files
  0a1b2c3d...

  git blame --ignore-revs-file .git-blame-ignore-revs code.src

Git can use it automatically too:

  git config blame.ignoreRevsFile .git-blame-ignore-revs
  git blame code.src

Though git-blame may fail or crash if blame.ignoreRevsFile is set but the file is missing (hence "config", not "config --global"). Since version 2.53, a configured ignoreRevsFile can be missing if the value starts with ":(optional)".

matijsvzuijlen · 2026-09-23T11:45:15

In GitHub and vim at least you can dig past those commits to see earlier relevant commits. I'm sure there are more tools that allow this.