git-whence is an interactive version of git-blame that makes it easy to reblame at a previous version and follow a line through commit history

git whence src/git.rs

b to reblame at a previous version

B will pop the stack and blame at the initial version (first screenshot)

w to follow a line through commit history

press h for help

installing

assuming ~/bin is on your PATH,

cd ~/bin
curl -L https://github.com/raylu/git-whence/releases/latest/download/git-whence-$(uname -m | sed s/arm64/aarch64/)-$(uname -s | awk '{print tolower($0)}' | sed -e s/darwin/apple-darwin/ -e s/linux/unknown-linux-gnu/) -o git-whence
chmod +x git-whence

alternatively, download a binary from the releases page

or install from source via cargo install git-whence: https://crates.io/crates/git-whence

macOS

brew tap raylu/formulae
brew install --cask git-whence

if you downloaded manually and get an error about how it "can’t be opened because Apple cannot check it or malicious software", this is because the quarantine extended attribute has been set by your browser. either xattr -d com.apple.quarantine git-whence or use curl/wget to download instead