CODEWITHSUNDEEP
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mellowsoon
mellowsoon

Reputation: 23281

Showing branch hierarchy at the command line?

I'm curious if there is a way to show branch hierarchy on the command line? For instance if I use git branch, instead of seeing output like this:

* master
joes_work
refactoring
experiment

You see output like this:

* master
    joes_work
    refactoring
        experiment

That way it's easy to see which branch a particular branch.. branched off of. Even if there's no specific command that outputs a tree structure, is there a command that outputs information on which branch came from which branch? I can use a perl script to format the output.

Upvotes: 97

Views: 103597

Answers (6)

Caribouflex
Caribouflex

Reputation: 781

I want to complete the answer of @ctcherry.

I like when I can also see the user who did the commit and the date, so this is the following line to use : 

git log --all --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit

However this is a pretty long line and difficult to memorize so you can use an alias. You just have to use this in your terminal :

git config --global alias.lg "HERE GOES MY BIG LOG COMMAND LINE"

To summarize copy and paste the line below on your terminal:

git config --global alias.lg "log --all --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit"

Then you will just have to use git lg to get your log history tree.

Example: enter image description here

src

Upvotes: 37

Arif
Arif

Reputation: 6488

Just type gitk command and press enter.

For me gitk is the easiest solution for this. Though it will not show you command mode, it will automatically populate a nice UI like this :

enter image description here

Upvotes: 18

sehe
sehe

Reputation: 393507

Try

git show-branch
git show-branch --all

Example output:

bash$ git show-branch --all
! [branchA] commitA only in branchA
 * [branchB] commitB
  ! [branchC] commitC only in branchC
---------------------
+   [branchA] commitA only in branchA 
 *  [branchB] commitB
  + [branchC] commitC only in branchC
 *+ [branchC~1] commitB-1 also in branchC
 *+ [branchC~2] commitB-2 also in branchC
+++ [branchC~3] common ancestor
+++ [branchC~4] more common ancestors

Upvotes: 34

Peter Eisentraut
Peter Eisentraut

Reputation: 36739

How about this alias for your .gitconfig:

[alias]
branch-tree = !cd "$(git rev-parse --git-dir)/refs/heads" && tree

You can also give options, depending on what your tree command supports, such as -D for timestamps.

Upvotes: -3

Chris Cherry
Chris Cherry

Reputation: 28574

sehe's solution looks great, here is another one that seems to contain similar information, formatted differently, it uses git log, so it contains commit information as well (ignore the branch names, I kind of messed them up!):

git log --all --graph --decorate --oneline --simplify-by-decoration

* ae038ad (HEAD, branch2-1) add content to tmp1
| * f5a0029 (branch2-1-1) Add another
|/  
* 3e56666 (branch1) Second wave of commits
| * 6c9af2a (branch1-2) add thing
|/  
* bfcf30a (master) commit 1

Upvotes: 139

svick
svick

Reputation: 244928

That's not how branches work from git's point of view. If I make some commits to branch a, create branch b from it, work there, and then do other work back on a:

A -- B -- D <-- a
       \
        \
          C <-- b

That's indistinguishable if you did it the other way around:

A -- B -- C <-- b
       \
        \
          D <-- a

The only way I can think of to find out from which branch certain branch originated is the reflog, but that's unreliable (entries older than 90 days are usually deleted).

Upvotes: 5

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