Get the last author date of a file

By default, when you clone a repo, the file dates will be the clone date and not the last modfied.

The following Git command returns the last author date of the file (NOT the Committer Date)

git log -1 --format=%aD FILENAME

The date will be in the RFC2822 format.

When is the first and last commit of a repo?

How old is the repo? (Date of the first commit)

git log --reverse --format=%aD | head -1

When was it last changed? (Date of last commit)

git log --format=%aD -1

How many authors (developers) are in this repo? (with how many commits)

This nifty command shows all the authors, their email and displays and sorts by number of commits.

git shortlog -sne

Description of switches from git shortlog --help

-s, --summary Suppress commit description and provide a commit count summary only.

-n, Sort output according to the number of commits per author instead of author alphabetic order.

-e, --email Show the email address of each author.