Why does a pipe remove the branch names from git log?

Question

when I run

> git log --oneline

I get output that looks like this

abcdef0 (head, branch, origin/branch) comment
0987654 d         


        

Answer 1

For start, I too had noticed the lack of colors after a pipe to bash, but what you describe about decorations (branch and tag names) disappearing is odd. Let's adress them separately.

Adressing the branch names (decorations) themselves

--decorate

is the flag for that, for a one-shot use.

For the permanent effect, you can set it in your config

log.decorate true

And for a more specific need, note you can use it in a pretty format, with the placeholder %d, for example :

git log -10 --pretty=format:"%C(yellow)%h %C(reset)%aN %ar %C(red)%d %C(reset)%s"

for a result that looks like this

About colors

No, I don't know how / why it breaks when it's passed to bash, I'll let more advanced users answer that part. (and as I said, on a personal note I'm very glad you asked this question because I'm eager to know that too - Edit : thanks torek! :-) )