Use gitk for detailed easy to parse histories of individual files

This is part of the Semicolon&Sons Code Diary - consisting of lessons learned on the job. You're in the git category.

Last Updated: 2024-04-24

I wanted to figure out if I had ever committed a required package to the composer.json package - i.e. was I to blame for failing to commit it or someone else / some tool to blame for removing it.

The fastest way to do this is probably with the visual tool gitk. It can be focused on a particular file like so: $ gitk composer.json

Here a GUI opened up with diffs for every commit and I could see what happened.