Finding when a change was made in GitHub

Created
Fri, 08/01/2021 - 17:57
Updated
Fri, 08/01/2021 - 17:57

I was recently going through some old bug reports for Backdrop CMS and I came across one that I discovered had since been fixed, though the issue was still open. Rather than just closing it, I wanted to post a link to the commit that fixed it (for posterity), so I went looking in GitHub for when the change to the file in question was made...

The file was views_handler_filter_term_node_tid.inc in the core Taxonomy module, and on line 129 I could see the code that had been a problem but was now fixed:

Line 129

To see when it was fixed, I did the following:

  • Clicked on the line number - it was highlighted and 3 dots appeared next to it
  • Clicked on the 3 dots and selected 'View git blame' from the menu that appeared

View git blame

A page was displayed showing the file on the right, and the git commits on the left that applied to each line of the file. I saw that line 129 was updated 5 years ago, so I clicked on its commit. Sure enough, at the bottom of the commit, line 129 of views_handler_filter_term_node_tid.inc was changed from $tree = taxonomy_get_tree($vocabulary->vid); to $tree = taxonomy_get_tree($vocabulary->machine_name);.

Line 129's last commit

I was then able to close the bug report by linking to the specific commit where the line in question had been updated. All thanks to 'git blame'.