Identifying when a file was deleted in Git

I needed to identify when a file was deleted, to find out why it was removed in the commit message. A quick search led me to this Stack Overflow page, which eventually ended here.

git log --all -- [filepath]

This will list out the commits that affect this file specifically, including the last one which removed it.

Here is a fun little adjustment to it which makes it format just a little bit easier at a glance.

Reference

• %h - abbreviated commit hash
• %d - ref names, like the --decorate option of git-log[1]
• %s - subject
• %ar - author date, relative (instead of %cr, which is commit date, since rebase can change the commit date)
• %an - author name

git log --all --pretty=format:'%h -%d %s (%ar) <%an>' -- bitbucket-pipelines.yml

3e6caf229 - Remove puppet deploy from pipeline (2 years, 1 month ago) <Jack Stupple>
b32889c75 - bitbucket-pipelines.yml edited online with Bitbucket (2 years, 2 months ago) <Jack Stupple>