Git Tutorial EclipseCon France 2014 - Git Exercise

1. Using the “git blame” feature
Using the history view and filtering the history is a useful tool for inspecting project history.
However, if you look at a particular file and find a bug in a particular code line you would like to
instantly know who was the last person who changed this line of code. Additionally, you would
like to know why the developer did that i.e. locate the commit in which the change was done.
In Git, this feature is called “git blame” or “git annotate”.
Git Blame on a checked out version
● In Eclipse open a file for which you would like to see the Git annotations. For example,
open the Calculator.java from the example project.
● Right-click the left margin in the editor and choose Show Annotations
● A new “annotations” column appears in the editor window

2. ● Right click the “annotations” column and choose Revisions > Show Author
● Now, for each line of the code you know who last changed it
● Keep the mouse over an annotation for a couple of seconds. A window pops up showing
the info about the commit in which this line was changed together of the change which
was done in this commit in the vicinity of this line.

3. ● Click on the “open commit” in order to see full details of the commit.
● Click on “show in history” to open the commit in the History View
● Click on “show annotation” to open the version of this file from the parent of the commit.
By this you can drill down into the history of this file to find the commits which changed
this line.
Git Blame on a historic version
Git blame only shows you the commit which was the last one changing a line. You can however
also see blame annotations on older versions of a file.
Open the history view and select a commit. On the lower left you see the lists of files which were
changed by this commit. Select Show Annotation. This opens an editor containing the content of
the file version contained in the commit together with their blame annotations.
Copyright © 2014 by C. Halstrick, E. Kempin, S. Lay, S. Zivkov, M. Sohn