Post History

[Disclaimer: This is an alternative workaround, and not really answering your question.]

When blaming files in a git repository in which I am working at the moment, I usually blame from the master branch, or from HEAD, or HEAD^, depending on what I'm interested in.  That is, don't start blaming on the working tree, but on some revision.

My git-blame(1) sessions look more or less like this (this is an actual session from February <https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow/issues/939#issuecomment-1933925702>):

```sh
alx@debian:~/src/shadow/shadow/ts$ git blame HEAD -- lib/strtoday.c | grep DAY
89a7ee7b2 libmisc/strtoday.c (Iker Pedrosa      2023-06-07 14:58:34 +0200 76) 	return (t + DAY / 2) / DAY;
```
```diff
alx@debian:~/src/shadow/shadow/ts$ git show 89a7ee7b2 -- libmisc/strtoday.c | grep DAY
-	return (long) (t + DAY / 2) / DAY;
+	return (t + DAY / 2) / DAY;
```
```sh
alx@debian:~/src/shadow/shadow/ts$ git blame 89a7ee7b2^ -- libmisc/strtoday.c | grep DAY
815ffb7d3 (nekral-guest 2008-06-13 19:48:11 +0000 76) 	return (long) (t + DAY / 2) / DAY;
```
```diff
alx@debian:~/src/shadow/shadow/ts$ git show 815ffb7d3 -- libmisc/strtoday.c | grep DAY
-	return (t + DAY / 2) / DAY;
+	return (long) (t + DAY / 2) / DAY;
-		return result / DAY;	/* success */
+		return (long) (result / DAY);	/* success */
```
```sh
alx@debian:~/src/shadow/shadow/ts$ git blame 815ffb7d3^ -- libmisc/strtoday.c | grep DAY
effd479bf (nekral-guest 2007-10-07 11:45:23 +0000  79) 	return (t + DAY / 2) / DAY;
effd479bf (nekral-guest 2007-10-07 11:45:23 +0000 139) 		return result / DAY;	/* success */
```
```diff
alx@debian:~/src/shadow/shadow/ts$ git show effd479bf -- libmisc/strtoday.c | grep DAY
-	return (t + DAY/2)/DAY;
+	return (t + DAY / 2) / DAY;
-		return result / DAY;  /* success */
+		return result / DAY;	/* success */
```
```sh
alx@debian:~/src/shadow/shadow/ts$ git blame effd479bf^ -- libmisc/strtoday.c | grep DAY
45c6603cc (nekral-guest 2007-10-07 11:44:02 +0000  80) 	return (t + DAY/2)/DAY;
45c6603cc (nekral-guest 2007-10-07 11:44:02 +0000 142) 		return result / DAY;  /* success */
```
```diff
alx@debian:~/src/shadow/shadow/ts$ git show 45c6603cc -- libmisc/strtoday.c | grep DAY
+	return (t + DAY/2)/DAY;
+		return result / DAY;  /* success */
```
```sh
alx@debian:~/src/shadow/shadow/ts$ git log -1 45c6603cc | head
commit 45c6603cc86c5881b00ac40e0f9fe548c30ff6be
Author: nekral-guest <nekral-guest@5a98b0ae-9ef6-0310-add3-de5d479b70d7>
Date:   Sun Oct 7 11:44:02 2007 +0000

    [svn-upgrade] Integrating new upstream version, shadow (19990709)
```

BTW, I never used an ignore file for cosmetic commits.  I didn't even know that feature existed.  And I don't think it's a good idea: sometimes it's those cosmetic patches the ones that accidentally broke something, so skipping them might be problematic.  Anyway, a blame session is usually small (i.e., no more than 10 or 20 commits).  It's not like you refactor the same code over and over a hundred times).