CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitshellcommand-prompt
MadStark
MadStark

Reputation: 585

Show git branch name OR commit id

I am trying to reproduce the behavior of my shell prompt when it comes to showing the current branch name. I'm here using fish but most shell have this feature. fish prompt

If I use the command

git rev-parse --abbrev-ref --verify HEAD

it returns me

master

Good!

Now, if I checkout an old commit, my prompt shows fish prompt

And if I run the command above again it returns

HEAD

Which is not what I want. I want 3171f5a just like the prompt. So I've got a new command.

git rev-parse --short --verify HEAD

3171f5a

Nice! But if I come back to master it gives me

617ca76

Do you know if there's a command to give me that output straight away, without an if statement checking if the return value is HEAD. (shorten hash or not is fine)

Thank you very much

Upvotes: 3

Views: 3074

Answers (2)

torek
torek

Reputation: 487785

The one-line way to do this in the shell is to use two separate Git commands:

git symbolic-ref --short -q HEAD || git rev-parse --short HEAD

In the detached HEAD case, the git symbolic-ref command fails (while the -q prevents it from complaining to stderr) and the second git rev-parse command goes on to print the shortened hash ID.

Note that when you are on an unborn branch, the git symbolic-ref command succeeds and you get the (shortened) name of the unborn branch.

Upvotes: 6

Mark Adelsberger
Mark Adelsberger

Reputation: 45659

The reason git prompt logic is usually wrapped up in a function is that it's not quite as simple as a single git command. You can get close with something like

git log -n 1 --format="%D>%h" |cut -d'>' -f2

but looking at this I can't help thinking it's a bit brittle (and you may get some unwanted white space).

The constraint of not using if (or something equivalent) may not be entirely realistic here.

Upvotes: 0

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