sphinx-last-updated-by-git¶

sphinx-last-updated-by-git adds a “Last updated” date to each page, pulled from git commit history. Lumina displays it automatically in the page footer when the extension is active.

Setup¶

uv add sphinx-last-updated-by-git

conf.py¶

extensions = ["sphinx_last_updated_by_git"]

html_last_updated_fmt = "%B %-d, %Y"  # e.g. "April 3, 2025"

The date appears in the footer of every page that has a git history. Pages without a commit history (new, untracked files) show nothing.

CI: Full Clone Required¶

By default, GitHub Actions performs a shallow clone (fetch-depth: 1). This causes the extension to return no date for most pages. Set fetch-depth: 0 in your checkout step:

.github/workflows/docs.yml¶

- uses: actions/checkout@v6
  with:
    fetch-depth: 0

Suppressing Warnings¶

If you build in shallow-clone environments (e.g., local preview builds), suppress the warning:

conf.py¶

suppress_warnings = ["git.too_shallow"]

Configuration Reference¶

Option	Default	Description
`html_last_updated_fmt`	`None`	Date format string (strftime syntax). Required to display the date.
`git_last_updated_metatags`	`True`	Inject `<meta>` tags with the timestamp into `<head>`.
`git_exclude_commits`	`[]`	Commit hashes to ignore (useful after mass-reformatting commits).
`git_last_updated_when_merged`	`False`	Use merge date instead of author date.