--pretty[='<format>']::

        Pretty-prints the details of a commit.  `--pretty`
	without an explicit `=<format>` defaults to 'medium'.
	If the commit is a merge, and if the pretty-format
        is not 'oneline', 'email' or 'raw', an additional line is
        inserted before the 'Author:' line.  This line begins with
        "Merge: " and the sha1s of ancestral commits are printed,
        separated by spaces.  Note that the listed commits may not
        necessarily be the list of the *direct* parent commits if you
        have limited your view of history: for example, if you are
        only interested in changes related to a certain directory or
        file.  Here are some additional details for each format:

        * 'oneline'

	  <sha1> <title line>
+
This is designed to be as compact as possible.

        * 'short'

	  commit <sha1>
	  Author: <author>

	      <title line>

        * 'medium'

	  commit <sha1>
	  Author: <author>
	  Date: <date>

	      <title line>

	      <full commit message>

        * 'full'

	  commit <sha1>
	  Author: <author>
	  Commit: <committer>

	      <title line>

	      <full commit message>

        * 'fuller'

	  commit <sha1>
	  Author: <author>
	  AuthorDate: <date & time>
	  Commit: <committer>
	  CommitDate: <date & time>

	       <title line>

	       <full commit message>


        * 'email'

	  From <sha1> <date>
	  From: <author>
	  Date: <date & time>
	  Subject: [PATCH] <title line>

	  full commit message>


	* 'raw'
+
The 'raw' format shows the entire commit exactly as
stored in the commit object.  Notably, the SHA1s are
displayed in full, regardless of whether --abbrev or
--no-abbrev are used, and 'parents' information show the
true parent commits, without taking grafts nor history
simplification into account.

	* 'format:'
+
The 'format:' format allows you to specify which information
you want to show. It works a little bit like printf format,
with the notable exception that you get a newline with '%n'
instead of '\n'.

E.g, 'format:"The author of %h was %an, %ar%nThe title was >>%s<<"'
would show something like this:

The author of fe6e0ee was Junio C Hamano, 23 hours ago
The title was >>t4119: test autocomputing -p<n> for traditional diff input.<<

The placeholders are:

- '%H': commit hash
- '%h': abbreviated commit hash
- '%T': tree hash
- '%t': abbreviated tree hash
- '%P': parent hashes
- '%p': abbreviated parent hashes
- '%an': author name
- '%ae': author email
- '%ad': author date
- '%aD': author date, RFC2822 style
- '%ar': author date, relative
- '%at': author date, UNIX timestamp
- '%cn': committer name
- '%ce': committer email
- '%cd': committer date
- '%cD': committer date, RFC2822 style
- '%cr': committer date, relative
- '%ct': committer date, UNIX timestamp
- '%e': encoding
- '%s': subject
- '%b': body
- '%Cred': switch color to red
- '%Cgreen': switch color to green
- '%Cblue': switch color to blue
- '%Creset': reset color
- '%m': left, right or boundary mark
- '%n': newline


--encoding[=<encoding>]::
	The commit objects record the encoding used for the log message
	in their encoding header; this option can be used to tell the
	command to re-code the commit log message in the encoding
	preferred by the user.  For non plumbing commands this
	defaults to UTF-8.