It is a common open source software practice to include a README file in the root of a git repository as documentation source for the project. For this example, we will operate on the README.MD file. The default execution of git blame will simply output the commands help menu. A file-path is required for any useful output. Git blame only operates on individual files. The first step of our git blame usage example is to git clone the example repository. This open source project is a simple repository that contains a README.md file which has a few commits from different authors. We will use the open source project git-blame-example. In order to demonstrate git blame we need a repository with some history.

Additionally, most IDE's that have Git integration also have dynamic blame views. These views are referenced in collaborative discussions around pull requests and commits. Online Git hosting sites like Bitbucket offer blame views which are UI wrappers to git blame. Git blame is often used with a GUI display. This is used to explore the history of specific code and answer questions about what, how, and why the code was added to a repository. This is used to examine specific points of a file's history and get context as to who the last author was that modified the line. The high-level function of git blame is the display of author metadata attached to specific committed lines in a file. The git blame command is a versatile troubleshooting utility that has extensive usage options.

Github readme formatting