Get Git Commits by ID in Commit Message

This is a quick example of how to get a list of commits by substring of the commit message.

Imagine you have the following commit history (in order):

e3bf91a #14 - Fixed README.md.
19fbd5a #14 - Removed unused variable.
81f7f7d #13 - Added new payments feature.
d046dbe #14 - Replaced tabs with spaces.
6781f7f #12 - Created new page for blog.

If we want to list all of the commits for issue #14 in order, we can run the following command:

$ git log --oneline | grep -E '#14'

Which would output:

e3bf91a #14 - Fixed README.md.
19fbd5a #14 - Removed unused variable.
d046dbe #14 - Replaced tabs with spaces.

If we wanted to output commits for multiple specific issue numbers, say only #12 and #14, we could separate each issue by the pipe character | in the grep -E command, like so:

$ git log --oneline | grep -E '#12|#14'

Which would output:

e3bf91a #14 - Fixed README.md.
19fbd5a #14 - Removed unused variable.
d046dbe #14 - Replaced tabs with spaces.
6781f7f #12 - Created new page for blog.

You can add as many issue IDs as you like and keep separating them by | to get as many commits by ID as you need. They will always be listed in order, from latest at the top to oldest at the bottom.

Any substring will work in the parameter for grep -E. It doesn't have to be an issue ID.

To conclude, I use this approach a lot when I need to cherry-pick specific commits from a ticket or issue that I've worked on from one branch to another or when I want to look up the history of the commits related to a specific issue.