git shortlog

Release notes' best friend.

🎯 What & why

Group commits by author. Default output: each author with their commit count and subjects. The fastest way to compose a release note's 'who contributed' section.

🧠 Mental model

Shortlog is log filtered through a per-author aggregator. Most useful flags add summary counts and tame the output for paste-into-changelog.

🛠️ Synopsis

git shortlog [<options>] [<revision range>] [[--] <path>...]

🎚️ Switches & options

Flag	What it does
`-s`	Suppress descriptions; just author + commit count.
`-n`	Sort by commit count descending.
`-e`	Show emails too.
`--no-merges`	Skip merge commits.
`--group=<type>`	Group by `author`, `committer`, or `trailer:<name>` (e.g. `Reviewed-by`).

💡 Use cases

Release notes credits.
End-of-quarter contributor summaries.
Onboarding: who knows this code?

🧪 Examples

Per-author commits since last tag.

$ git shortlog -sne v1.1..HEAD

Reviewers tally for a release.

$ git shortlog --group=trailer:Reviewed-by v1.1..v1.2

🎓 Recommendations

Combine with .mailmap to canonicalize multiple identities for one human.
-sne is the killer combo: short, numbered, with emails.

🪤 Common pitfalls

Without .mailmap, contributors with multiple emails count separately.
Without --no-merges, merge commits inflate counts.

🔗 Related modules

📝 Quiz

Hit each option, then Check answers. Score is recorded; Next is always open.