¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)

In my ~/.gitconfig there’s an alias for git log, inspired by Thorsten Ball¹:

[alias]
  ll = "!f() { git log --graph --pretty='tformat:%C(always,yellow)%h%C(always,reset) %C(always,green)%ar%C(always,reset){%C(always,bold blue)%an%C(always,reset){%C(always,red)%d%C(always,reset) %s' \"$@\" | column -t -s '{' | less -XS; }; f"

I wish I could get rid of the shell utilities (column and less), but they’re necessary to properly align the columns.

I also tried to get rid of the function wrapper (f()): it works when you run git ll. However when you run git ll . (=display the commit history from files underneath the current directory only) it fails:

% git ll .
. is a directory

Therefore it’s better to keep it around. I am satisfied with the current form.

The output looks like this (image from upstream):

Update(2025-08-21): The following modification is better² and has no external dependencies:

[alias]
  ll = log --graph --pretty=tformat:'%C(always,yellow)%h%C(always,reset) %C(always,green)%<(25,trunc)%ar%C(always,reset) %C(always,bold blue)%<(20,trunc)%an%C(always,reset) %C(always,red)%d%C(always,reset) %s'