GitHistory Plus

Git log, file, folder and line history with a commit graph, uncommitted changes, branch and tag comparison and commit actions, in VS Code and Eclipse Theia.

GitHistory Plus started as a fork of Git History (donjayamanne.githistory) by DonJayamanne, which is no longer maintained. It is more than a modernized copy:

• Rebuilt from scratch on a current, secure toolchain: no known vulnerabilities in what it ships (the original's dependencies had 234 audit findings), no telemetry, and a locked-down view.
• A new, faster interface: a compact, virtualized commit table that adapts to the width of the panel, follows your theme and works from the keyboard.
• Many features the original never had, from an uncommitted changes row and folder history to branch lookups, issue links and a file tree. The full list is below.
• Long-standing upstream bugs fixed: dates, symlinked and Windows paths, compare results, parser crashes, repository discovery.

What's new compared to Git History

History

• Uncommitted changes as a dashed row on top of the history. Its files open as HEAD ↔ working tree diffs, and in file or folder history it counts only the changes under that path.
• Folder history: right-click a folder in the Explorer for every commit that touched anything under it.
• Compare a file with a branch or tag: the version in any branch, tag or commit against your working copy.
• Search by commit hash or file path, a date range and a max-count filter, and .mailmap support.
• "Me" in the author filter, mapped through .mailmap.
• Fetch from all remotes, with prune, from the toolbar.
• Go to HEAD, and clickable parent hashes that jump to the parent commit.
• Previous / Next buttons to step through a file's versions in one reused diff tab.
• Compare… any two branches, tags or commits from the toolbar.

Commit list and details

• Hover a commit to see which branches and tags contain it; the details list them too.
• Issue links: keys like ABC-123 in commit messages link to your tracker (issueLinks setting).
• Changed files as a list or a folder tree (single-child folders merged).
• A click on a file opens a preview diff; a double-click or Open Changes keeps the tab, as in VS Code.
• Resizable Author, Date and Hash columns, and a resizable details panel; all widths are remembered.
• Merge commits are dimmed, and a local branch and its remote on the same commit share one badge (main ☁ origin).
• In file and line history the tracked file comes first in the details, with the commit's other files folded away.

Everywhere

• A status bar button and ctrl+alt+h open the repository history; alt+h opens the file history.
• Keyboard: arrows, Home/End and Page Up/Down move through commits, c copies the hash, Shift+F10 opens the commit menu, Enter opens a version in file history, / or Ctrl+F / Cmd+F searches, and Escape clears the search (a second Escape returns to the list).
• Eclipse Theia as well as VS Code (see Requirements).

Features

• History views: the repository, the active file (following renames), a folder, or the selected lines.
• Commit graph in a dense, virtualized table with branch and tag badges. Filtered views (a file, a search, an author) draw a simple timeline, since lanes can't be drawn when the commits in between are hidden.
• Filters: current, all or one branch; author; message, hash or path search (author:, path:, since:, until:); date range; max count.
• Commit details in a side panel when the view is wide, or under the commit when it is narrow: message, people and dates, parents, the branches and tags that contain it, and the changed files with +/− counts.
• Compare two commits, branches or tags (the Compare… button, or Select for Comparison then Compare with Selected). Results appear in the Compare Commits view in the Explorer, with added, deleted, modified and renamed files.
• Commit actions: checkout, cherry-pick, revert, merge, rebase, soft and hard reset, create branch, create and remove tag, remove a local or remote branch. Destructive ones ask for confirmation in a native dialog.
• Read-only past versions: files opened at a commit can't be edited by mistake.
• Themes and accessibility: light, dark and high-contrast themes, screen-reader labels and visible focus.

Settings

dateFormat accepts relative (relative for the last 7 days, then the editor language's format), locale, iso, or a custom pattern built from YYYY, MM, DD, HH, mm, ss, for example YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm.

For example, to link Jira keys:

"gitHistoryPlus.issueLinks": [
  { "pattern": "\\b([A-Z][A-Z0-9]+-\\d+)\\b", "url": "https://jira.example.com/browse/$1" }
]

Privacy

Git History Plus has no telemetry and sends nothing anywhere by default. Avatars are off by default. If you set gitHistoryPlus.avatars to github or gravatar, the extension host (not the webview or your browser) contacts that service: Gravatar receives an MD5 hash of each author email, and GitHub receives the user name taken from @users.noreply.github.com addresses only. Images reach the view as data: URIs. The webview and your browser never contact third parties. Repository text is always rendered as text, and the history view runs under a strict content security policy.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.101.0 or newer (the first release whose extension host runs Node 22), or Eclipse Theia 1.76 or newer. Verified on a stock Eclipse Theia 1.76 browser app with the built-in Git extension (see "Theia 1.76 check" in docs/acceptance-checklist.md). Theia applications that customize the workbench may need their own check.
• git on the PATH of the machine where the workspace lives (the extension runs as a workspace extension, so it works with Remote-SSH, WSL and containers). The git.path setting is honoured.

Why 1.101.0: this is the first VS Code stable release whose extension host runs Node 22. Evidence:

• microsoft/vscode tag 1.100.0 -> package.json electron: 34.5.1 -> Electron 34.5.1 bundles Node 20.19.0.
• microsoft/vscode tag 1.101.0 -> package.json electron: 35.5.1 -> Electron 35.5.1 bundles Node 22.15.1 (Electron 35.0.0 was the first 35.x, bundling Node 22.14.0).
• Earlier releases are older still (1.98 to 1.100 ship Electron 34 / Node 20; 1.96 to 1.97 ship Electron 32).
• Node versions taken from releases.electronjs.org/releases.json and Electron's DEPS node_version.

Development

Use Node 22 (.nvmrc).

npm ci
npm run build             # bundle extension and webview into dist/
npm run lint
npm run typecheck
npm run test:unit
npm run test:integration  # needs a display; downloads a VS Code build
npm run audit:prod
npm run package           # produces githistory-plus-0.1.1.vsix

CI runs on Ubuntu, macOS and Windows with Node 22 and 24. See docs/acceptance-checklist.md for the manual acceptance pass in VS Code and Theia.

Releasing

Releases go to the VS Code Marketplace and Open VSX through .github/workflows/publish.yml, using each store's trusted publishing (GitHub's OIDC token is exchanged for a short-lived credential), so no access token is stored in the repository.

1. Bump version in package.json, update CHANGELOG.md, and push.
2. Create a GitHub Release whose tag is v plus that version (for example v0.2.0).
3. The workflow checks the tag, runs lint, typecheck, the unit and integration tests and the audit, and packages the .vsix once. Approve the two publish jobs (Marketplace, Open VSX) in the publish environment; each store gets the same .vsix, and a failed job can be re-run on its own.

One-time setup (both registrations: owner safisa, repository git-history-plus, workflow publish.yml, environment publish):

• VS Code Marketplace: create the safisa publisher at marketplace.visualstudio.com/manage with a Microsoft account, then add a policy under the publisher's Trusted Publishing (docs).
• Open VSX: sign the Publisher Agreement and own the safisa namespace; publish the first version by hand (npx ovsx publish <file>.vsix -p <token>), then register the trusted publisher under Settings → Trusted Publishers (docs). Then set the repository variable PUBLISH_OPEN_VSX to true; until then the Open VSX job is skipped.
• GitHub: create the publish environment with required reviewers.

Third-party software

The webview bundles React, React DOM, scheduler, TanStack Virtual and the VS Code Codicons font; their licenses and copyright notices are in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md, which ships in the .vsix.

Credits and license

Forked from Git History by DonJayamanne. Released under the MIT license: Copyright (c) 2015 DonJayamanne, Copyright (c) 2026 Safi-SeidAhmad. See LICENSE.