Show mtime of a file in another branch

Using git ls-files --debug or stat command, you can see the mtime (last modified time) of a file in a current branch (strictly in a current commit).

$ git ls-files --debug main.py 
main.py
  ctime: 1626910912:885869194
  mtime: 1626910912:869124612
  dev: 16777234 ino: 8580291
  uid: 501  gid: 20
  size: 4832    flags: 0

$ stat main.py 
  File: main.py
  Size: 4832        Blocks: 16         IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 1000012h/16777234d  Inode: 8580291     Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--)  Uid: (  501/     user)   Gid: (   20/   staff)
Access: 2021-07-22 09:08:43.090154548 +0900
Modify: 2021-07-22 08:41:52.869124612 +0900
Change: 2021-07-22 08:41:52.885869194 +0900
 Birth: 2021-07-22 08:41:52.868783790 +0900

Then is there any way to see this information for the same file in another branch (another commit)?

---

Workarounds

Currently I have two workarounds, both of which I don’t think are beautiful solutions.

• First git checkout <commit> and then git ls-files --debug <file>.

• First git blame <commit> <file>. The output includes many timestamps. Parsing them, pick the latest timestamp (using cut, sort, sed, etc.).

Answer

You can get modification time in another branch with :

git log -1 --pretty="format:%ci" branch-name -- file-name