log first 10 in git

Two questions:

1. How to show the first 10 commit in git from beginning to end. (no branch)
2. How the specify the commit index and log it. (show the second or third)

I know that git use parent to link the commit, it's easy to log the commit from end to start. like: git log HEAD~10

But i need to query from the start to end, is it possible?

git log -10

Would show 10 latest commits matching the revision spec (a missing spec means "all commits").

See manpage:

git help log

section Commit Limiting

-<number>, -n <number>, --max-count=<number>
    Limit the number of commits to output.

Simply log everything with one line format and tail the output:

git log  --pretty=oneline | tail -n 10 

Here my approach,

To get first 10 commits:

git log -n 10

-n is number

Additional To get next 10 commit skip first 10 :

git log --skip=10 -n 10

To get the last 10 commits:

git log HEAD~10..HEAD

To get them in oldest-to-newest order:

git log --reverse HEAD~10..HEAD

Note that if there are merges, this may show more than 10 commits; add --first-parent if you only want to traverse through the first parent of each branch.

For far more detail, see the documentation for git rev-list.

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Edit: You've already gotten a useful answer above to "show commits near the start of history" (again, see the caveats about multiple non-connected commit DAGs in a repo). But you can also do, e.g.:

git log --no-walk `git rev-list HEAD | tail -n 10`

and:

git log --no-walk `git rev-list --reverse HEAD | head -n 10`

depending on which order you want the results.

i would use below simple syntax command;

git log -10 --oneline

the best result comes with combination of both best answers:

git log --pretty=oneline -10

Simply log everything reverse -1 means list one log

git log  --reverse -1

Try this neat output format:

git log --date=short -10 --pretty="%C(Yellow)%h %x09 %C(reset)%ad %x09 %C(Cyan)%an: %C(reset)%s"

It will print short lines with colors, like:

Because... more detail :p

1. How to show the first 10 commit in git from beginning to end. (no branch)
2. How the specify the commit index and log it. (show the second or third)

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By (no branch), you might be asking about the reflog rather than any given ancestry chain. The following has nothing to do with the branch you are on.

git log -g --pretty=oneline | tail -10

<sha> HEAD@{###}: action: summary (old)
<sha> HEAD@{###}: action: summary (older)
...
<sha> HEAD@{###}: action: summary (oldest)

• -g is --walk-reflogs Instead of walking the commit ancestry chain, walk reflog entries.q
• add |cut -d ' ' -f 2|tr -d ':' > log to log only the reflog commit index.

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The following will show the earliest ancestors of the currently checked out branch.

git log --reverse --pretty=oneline | head -10 | cat -n

1 <sha> summary (oldest)
2 <sha> summary (second)

• --reverse Output the commits in reverse order.
• Can't use simply -n 10 or -10 since it breaks --reverse
• cat -n adds line numbers (commit index?)

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In case someone wants more than just git one-line log:

git log --reverse | awk 'NR>1 {print last} {last=$0}; /^commit/ && ++c==11{exit}'

where the 11 at the end should be set to 1 more than the number of commits you want.

As here points out git log --reverse -n 10 doesn't work as you need it to. (I suppose it would need to be non-commutative to give you the ability to chose the first 10 commits in reverse order or the last 10 commits 浪)