{"id":20069,"date":"2020-07-24T02:40:09","date_gmt":"2020-07-24T09:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/careerkarma.com\/blog\/?p=20069"},"modified":"2023-12-01T03:56:02","modified_gmt":"2023-12-01T11:56:02","slug":"git-blame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/careerkarma.com\/blog\/git-blame\/","title":{"rendered":"git blame: A Beginner\u2019s Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How to Use the git blame Command<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You may have been told in school never to play the blame game. When you\u2019re working with Git<\/a>, you can ignore that advice. Using the blame command is an essential part of Git.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The git blame command analyzes each line in a file to determine who last modified the line and in what commit the line was modified.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this guide, we\u2019re going to talk about the git blame command and how it works. We\u2019ll walk through a few examples of this command to help you get started. Let\u2019s begin!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is git blame?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The git blame command returns a list of all the lines in a file alongside who changed that file and when it was last changed. This command is useful because it helps you see how a file has evolved without having to look through different commits<\/a> individually.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To use this command, we\u2019re going to need a repository with some commits. Let\u2019s use the Career Karma web-tutorials repository as an example. We\u2019ll need to clone this repository to our computer so we can get started:
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

git clone https:\/\/github.com\/Career-Karma-Tutorials\/web-tutorials<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Now that we have this repository on our local machine, we can start using the git blame command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How to Use git blame<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The git blame command shows the history of an individual file. It cannot be used on multiple files. Let\u2019s analyze the history of the README.md file in the repository:
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
git blame README.md<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
This file has been changed in a few different commits:
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ef070f80 (jamesgallagher432 2020-06-26 12:57:37 +0100  1) # Career Karma Web Tutorials\nef070f80 (jamesgallagher432 2020-06-26 12:57:37 +0100  2)\nef070f80 (jamesgallagher432 2020-06-26 12:57:37 +0100  3) This repository contains the code for Career Karma's web tutorials.\nef070f80 (jamesgallagher432 2020-06-26 12:57:37 +0100  4)\nef070f80 (jamesgallagher432 2020-06-26 12:57:37 +0100  5) Check out our technical tutorials on the [Career Karma blog](careerkarma.com\/blog\/).\nef070f80 (jamesgallagher432 2020-06-26 12:57:37 +0100  6)\nbad0b91c (James Gallagher   2020-07-21 09:45:46 +0100  7) ## Articles<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\n\n
This shows the first seven lines of our README.md file, line by line. There are more lines to show but we don\u2019t need to analyze every line for this tutorial.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a lot of information we can tell from this output. The first line of our file contains the following metadata:
<\/p>\n\n\n\n