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Here is how you can do this via the commandline for one or more lines:

git log -L 40,50:app/models/user.rb

I think that will lose track of what you're really after if the function changes enough, or is moved to a different part of the file, or just moved out. Without tools that understand the code (e.g. AI) git alone can't keep track of changes the way humans do.

Yeah, you're right. I did a little investigation before posting that and it seemed to handle some movement within the file but after looking at it more closely I see it is not fully robust (even within the same file it misses some earlier changes).

This page provides some other techniques: https://tekin.co.uk/2020/11/patterns-for-searching-git-revis... but I think they have their own limitations.

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