$ git log --oneline -G'^int commit_tree'
40d52ff make commit_tree a library function
81b50f3 Move 'builtin-*' into a 'builtin/' subdirectory
7b9c0a6 git-commit-tree: make it usable from other builtins
Define a Git textconv filter for your new script. (See the gitattributes man page for more details.) The name of the filter and the location of the command can be anything you like.
Tell Git to use that filter before calculating diffs for the file in question.
$ echo "my_file diff=my_filter" >> .gitattributes
Now, if you use -G. (note the .) to list all the commits that produce visible changes when your filter is applied, you will have exactly those commits that you're interested in. Any other options that use Git's diff routines, such as --patch, will also get this restricted view.
$ git log -G. --patch my_file
Voilà!
One useful improvement you might want to make is to have your filter script take a method name as its first argument (and the file as its second). This lets you specify a new method of interest just by calling git config, rather than having to edit your script. For example, you might say: