Git tricks: file creation dates for all files in a Git repo directory

Get git file creation dates.md

Git - print file creation dates

Scenario:

You have a directory of files in a git repository and you want to extract their original creation dates. Git does not track file creation date metadata, but you can get the first time the file was added in a commit.

This one-liner will print the dates and filenames sorted, in column format.

Solution:

# One-liner
WIDTH=35 ; for filename in * ; do created_date=$(git log --follow --format=%ad --date default $filename | tail -1); printf "%-${WIDTH}s |      %s \n" "$created_date" $filename ; done | sort


# More readable multi-line

WIDTH=35        # Column padding width
DIR=.           # You can substitute this for a directory name
for filename in "${DIR}"/*
do 
  created_date="$(git log --follow --format=%ad --date default $filename | tail -1)"
  printf "%-${WIDTH}s |      %s \n" "$created_date" $filename
done | sort

credit for enhancements to @datYori

credit for original inspiration to Timothy Keith - https://keithieopia.com/post/2017-03-09-git-file-creation-date/.

Credit to Timothy Keith for the Git date function. Sorting and columns added.

In my case this was more accurate

WIDTH=35 ; for filename in * ; do created_date=$(git log --follow --format=%ad --date default $filename | tail -1); printf "%-${WIDTH}s |      %s \n" "$created_date" $filename ; done | sort

WIDTH=35        # Column padding width
DIR=.           # You can substitute this for a directory name
for filename in "${DIR}"/*
do 
  created_date="$(git log --follow --format=%ad --date default $filename | tail -1)"
  printf "%-${WIDTH}s |      %s \n" "$created_date" $filename
done | sort

Thanks for the enhancement @datYori !

I'll update the original with a credit.