Git - Get Push Date | mnaoumov.dev

Git natively supports Author Date and Committer date for commits. However it is not very easy to detect when commit was actually pushed.

Here some discussions about that

Well, if you were the developer, who pushed that commit, you can use

git reflog origin/master --date=iso

and get something like

4adc587 refs/remotes/origin/master@{2013-01-25 22:07:15 +1100}: update by push

So you could get something, but it is difficult to find reflog for the specific commit.

So, I decided to follow the idea with git notes.

Firstly, we need to enable reflogs in a git server repo

Git-server-repo-path\config

[core]
    ...
    logAllRefUpdates = true

Then add server-side hooks to add notes with push date to all the commits pushed

Git-server-repo-path\hooks\post-receive

#!/bin/sh

while read oldRef newRef refName
do
    psCommand=".\\hooks\\post-receive.ps1 -OldRef \"$oldRef\" -NewRef \"$newRef\" -RefName \"$refName\""
    c:/windows/system32/WindowsPowerShell/v1.0/PowerShell.exe -Sta -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -NoProfile -Command "$psCommand"

    exitCode=$?

    if [ $exitCode != 0 ]
    then
        exit $exitCode
    fi
done

Git-server-repo-path\hooks\post-receive.ps1

#requires -version 2.0

[CmdletBinding()]
param
(
    [string] $OldRef,
    [string] $NewRef,
    [string] $RefName
)

$script:ErrorActionPreference = "Stop"
Set-StrictMode -Version Latest
function PSScriptRoot { $MyInvocation.ScriptName | Split-Path }
Trap { throw $_ }

if ($RefName -notlike "refs/heads/*")
{
    Write-Debug "$RefName is not a branch commit"
    exit
}

$branchName = $RefName -replace "refs/heads/"

$reflog = git log -1 -g --date=iso --format=%gD $branchName
if ($reflog -notmatch ".*@\{(?<date>.*)\}")
{
    Write-Warning "Cannot parse reflog date: $reflog"
    exit
}

$pushDate = $Matches.date

$commits = @(git rev-list "$OldRef..$NewRef" --first-parent)

foreach ($commit in $commits)
{
    git notes --ref=push-date add -m $pushDate $commit
}

I could not find a native way to extract date from the reflog, so I have to use some regex (line #25)

Ok, after that enabled on a server we are ready to use it on a client

Firstly we need to ensure that all the required notes were fetched

git fetch origin refs/notes/push-date:refs/notes/push-date

Then we can get push date for the commits using

function Get-PushDate
{
    param
    (
        [string] $Ref
    )

    $pushDateString = @(git log -1 $Ref --notes=push-date --format=%N)[0]

    if ($pushDateString -eq "")
    {
        return $null;
    }

    return [DateTime] $pushDateString
}

Please see my repo for more code.