Shell script for formatting the output of `git whatchanged` into a simple list of commit messages

git-report.py

#!/usr/local/bin/python

import optparse, sys, os

try:
    import git
except ImportError:
    print 'You need gitpython. `pip install gitpython`'
    sys.exit(os.EX_UNAVAILABLE)

parser  =   optparse.OptionParser()
parser.add_option('--verbose', dest = 'verbose', help = 'show author, timestamp and subject', action = "store_true", default = False)
parser.add_option('--prefix', help = 'The characters to prefix before each commit report', default = '* ')

options, args   =   parser.parse_args()

if len(args):
    tree1       =   args.pop(0)
else:
    print "You must specify a git object as the first argument"
    sys.exit(os.EX_NOINPUT)

if len(args):
    tree2       =   args.pop(0)
else:
    print "You must specify a git object as the second argument"
    sys.exit(os.EX_NOINPUT)
    
format      =   '--format=%s'
if options.verbose:
    format  =   '--format=%ae <%ai>: %s'

commits     =   []
g           =   git.Git(os.getcwd())
whatchanged =   g.whatchanged('%s..%s' % (tree1, tree2), format).split("\n")
for line in whatchanged:
    if line.find(':') == 0:
        continue
    if len(line):
        commits.append(line)
    
for commit in commits:
    print '%s%s' % (options.prefix, commit)