Finding what branch a Git commit came from

Question

Is there a way to find out what branch a commit comes from given its SHA-1 hash value    Bonus points if you can tell me how to accomplish this using Ruby Grit

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TL DR   Use the below if you care about shell exit statuses    branch-current - the current branch s name branch-names - clean branch names  one per line  branch-name - Ensure that only one branch is returned from branch-names   Both branch-name and branch-names accept a commit as the argument  and default to  HEAD if none is given     Aliases useful in scripting  branch-current    symbolic-ref --short HEAD     https   stackoverflow com a 19585361 5353461 branch-names       -z    1      amp  amp  git branch-current 2 gt  dev null    git branch --format    refname short   --contains     1 -HEAD          https   stackoverflow com a 19585361 5353461 branch-name     br   git branch-names    1     amp  amp  case    br   in      n    printf   Multiple branches   n s      br   gt  amp 2  exit 1   esac  echo    br          Commit only reachable from only one branch    git branch-name eae13ea master   echo    0    Output is to STDOUT Exit value is 0      Commit reachable from multiple branches    git branch-name 4bc6188 Multiple branches  attempt-extract master    echo    1    Output is to STDERR The exit value is 1      Because of the exit status  these can be safely built upon  For example  to get the remote used for fetching   remote-fetch     branch   git branch-name    1     amp  amp  git config branch    branch   remote    echo origin

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A poor man s option is to use the tool tig1 on HEAD  search for the commit  and then visually follow the line from that commit back up until a merge commit is seen  The default merge message should specify what branch is getting merged to where        1 Tig is an ncurses-based text-mode interface for Git  It functions   mainly as a Git repository browser  but it can also assist in staging   changes for commit at chunk level and act as a pager for output from   various Git commands

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For example  to find that c0118fa commit came from redesign interactions     ccfd449  HEAD - gt  develop  Require to return undef if no digits found     93dd5ff Merge pull request  4 from KES777 clean api        39d82d1 Fix tc0118faests for debugging debugger internals     ed67179 Move  amp push frame out of core     2fd84b5 Do not lose info about call point     3ab09a2 Improve debugger output  Show info about emitted events       a435005 Merge branch  redesign interactions  into clean api            a06cc29 Code comments       d5d6266 Remove copy paste code       c0118fa Allow command to choose how continue interaction       19cb534 Emit  amp interact event   You should run   git log c0118fa  HEAD --ancestry-path --merges   And scroll down to find last merge commit  Which is   commit a435005445a6752dfe788b8d994e155b3cd9778f Merge  0953cac a06cc29 Author  Eugen Konkov Date    Sat Oct 1 00 54 18 2016  0300      Merge branch  redesign interactions  into clean api   Update  Or just one command   git log c0118fa  HEAD --ancestry-path --merges --oneline --color   tail -n 1

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Update December 2013   sschuberth comments     git-what-branch  Perl script  see below  does not seem to be maintained anymore    git-when-merged is an alternative written in Python that s working very well for me    It is based on  Find merge commit which include a specific commit    git when-merged  OPTIONS  COMMIT  BRANCH          Find when a commit was merged into one or more branches     Find the merge commit that brought COMMIT into the specified BRANCH es        Specifically  look for the oldest commit on the first-parent history of BRANCH that contains the COMMIT as an ancestor      Original answer September 2010   Sebastien Douche just twitted  16 minutes before this SO answer       git-what-branch  Discover what branch a commit is on  or how it got to a named branch   This is a Perl script from Seth Robertson that seems very interesting      SYNOPSIS   git-what-branch  --allref   --all   --topo-order   --date-order    --quiet   --reference-branch branchname   --reference reference   lt commit-hash tag gt          OVERVIEW      Tell us  by default  the earliest causal path of commits and merges to cause the requested commit got onto a named branch    If a commit was made directly on a named branch  that obviously is the earliest path       By earliest causal path  we mean the path which merged into a named branch the earliest  by commit time  unless --topo-order is specified        PERFORMANCE      If many branches  e g  hundreds  contain the commit  the system may take a long time  for a particular commit in the Linux tree  it took 8 second to explore a branch  but there were over 200 candidate branches  to track down the path to each commit     Selection of a particular --reference-branch --reference tag to examine will be hundreds of times faster  if you have hundreds of candidate branches        EXAMPLES      git-what-branch --all 1f9c381fa3e0b9b9042e310c69df87eaf9b46ea4  1f9c381fa3e0b9b9042e310c69df87eaf9b46ea4 first merged onto master using the following minimal temporal path     v2 6 12-rc3-450-g1f9c381 merged up at v2 6 12-rc3-590-gbfd4bda  Thu May  5 08 59 37 2005     v2 6 12-rc3-590-gbfd4bda merged up at v2 6 12-rc3-461-g84e48b6  Tue May  3 18 27 24 2005     v2 6 12-rc3-461-g84e48b6 is on master    v2 6 12-rc3-461-g84e48b6 is on v2 6 12-n               This program does not take into account the effects of cherry-picking the commit of interest  only merge operations

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While Dav is correct that the information isn t directly stored  that doesn t mean you can t ever find out  Here are a few things you can do   Find branches the commit is on  git branch -a --contains  lt commit gt    This will tell you all branches which have the given commit in their history  Obviously this is less useful if the commit s already been merged   Search the reflogs  If you are working in the repository in which the commit was made  you can search the reflogs for the line for that commit  Reflogs older than 90 days are pruned by git-gc  so if the commit s too old  you won t find it  That said  you can do this   git reflog show --all   grep a871742   to find commit a871742  Note that you MUST use the abbreviatd 7 first digits of the commit   The output should be something like this   a871742 refs heads completion  0   commit  amend   mpc-completion  total rewrite   indicating that the commit was made on the branch  completion   The default output shows abbreviated commit hashes  so be sure not to search for the full hash or you won t find anything   git reflog show is actually just an alias for git log -g --abbrev-commit --pretty oneline  so if you want to fiddle with the output format to make different things available to grep for  that s your starting point   If you re not working in the repository where the commit was made  the best you can do in this case is examine the reflogs and find when the commit was first introduced to your repository  with any luck  you fetched the branch it was committed to  This is a bit more complex  because you can t walk both the commit tree and reflogs simultaneously  You d want to parse the reflog output  examining each hash to see if it contains the desired commit or not   Find a subsequent merge commit  This is workflow-dependent  but with good workflows  commits are made on development branches which are then merged in  You could do this   git log --merges  lt commit gt      to see merge commits that have the given commit as an ancestor   If the commit was only merged once  the first one should be the merge you re after  otherwise you ll have to examine a few  I suppose   The merge commit message should contain the branch name that was merged   If you want to be able to count on doing this  you may want to use the --no-ff option to git merge to force merge commit creation even in the fast-forward case   Don t get too eager  though  That could become obfuscating if overused   VonC s answer to a related question helpfully elaborates on this topic

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To find the local branch   grep -lR YOUR COMMIT  git refs heads   sed  s  git  refs  heads    g    To find the remote branch   grep -lR  commit  git refs remotes   sed  s  git  refs  remotes    g

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git branch --contains  lt ref gt  is the most obvious  porcelain  command to do this  If you want to do something similar with only  plumbing  commands   COMMIT   git rev-parse  lt ref gt     expands hash if needed for BRANCH in   git for-each-ref --format    refname   refs heads   do   if   git rev-list  BRANCH   fgrep -q  COMMIT   then     echo  BRANCH   fi done    crosspost from this SO answer

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khichar anil covered most of this in his answer     I am just adding the flag that will remove the tags from the revision names list   This gives us   git name-rev --name-only --exclude tags    SHA

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I deal with the same problem  Jenkins multibranch pipeline  - having only commit information and trying to find a branch name where this commit originally came from  It must work for remote branches  local copies are not available   This is what I work with   git rev-parse HEAD   xargs git name-rev   Optionally you can strip the output   git rev-parse HEAD   xargs git name-rev   cut -d    -f2   sed  s remotes  origin    g

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As an experiment  I made a post-commit hook that stores information about the currently checked out branch in the commit metadata  I also slightly modified gitk to show that information   You can check it out here  https   github com pajp branch-info-commits

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I think someone should face the same problem that can t find out the branch  although it actually exists in one branch   You d better pull all first   git pull --all   Then do the branch search   git name-rev  lt SHA gt    or   git branch --contains  lt SHA gt

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If the OP is trying to determine the history that was traversed by a branch when a particular commit was created   find out what branch a commit comes from given its SHA-1 hash value    then without the reflog there aren t any records in the Git object database that shows what named branch was bound to what commit history    I posted this as an answer in reply to a comment    Hopefully this script illustrates my point   rm -rf  tmp r1  tmp r2  mkdir  tmp r1  cd  tmp r1 git init  git config user name n  git config user email e x io git commit -m empty  --allow-empty  git branch -m b1  git branch b2 git checkout b1  touch f1  git add f1  git commit -m Add f1  git checkout b2  touch f2  git add f2  git commit -m Add f2  git merge -m merge branches  b1  git checkout b1  git merge b2 git clone  tmp r1  tmp r2  cd  tmp r2  git fetch origin b2 b2 set -x  cd  tmp r1  git log --oneline --graph --decorate  git reflog b1  git reflog b2  cd  tmp r2  git log --oneline --graph --decorate  git reflog b1  git reflog b2    The output shows the lack of any way to know whether the commit with  Add f1  came from branch b1 or b2 from the remote clone  tmp r2    Last lines of the output here     cd  tmp r1   git log --oneline --graph --decorate     f0c707d  HEAD  b2  b1  merge branches        086c9ce Add f1     80c10e5 Add f2      18feb84 empty   git reflog b1 f0c707d b1  0   merge b2  Fast-forward 086c9ce b1  1   commit  Add f1 18feb84 b1  2   Branch  renamed refs heads master to refs heads b1 18feb84 b1  3   commit  initial   empty   git reflog b2 f0c707d b2  0   merge b1  Merge made by the  recursive  strategy  80c10e5 b2  1   commit  Add f2 18feb84 b2  2   branch  Created from b1   cd  tmp r2   git log --oneline --graph --decorate     f0c707d  HEAD  origin b2  origin b1  origin HEAD  b2  b1  merge branches        086c9ce Add f1     80c10e5 Add f2      18feb84 empty   git reflog b1 f0c707d b1  0   clone  from  tmp r1   git reflog b2 f0c707d b2  0   fetch origin b2 b2  storing head

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Aside from searching through all of the tree until you find a matching hash  no

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This simple command works like a charm   git name-rev  lt SHA gt   For example  where test-branch is the branch name    git name-rev 651ad3a 251ad3a remotes origin test-branch   Even this is working for complex scenarios  like   origin branchA                 branchB                        commit lt SHA1 gt                                      commit lt SHA2 gt    Here git name-rev commit lt SHA2 gt  returns branchB

[git] Finding what branch a Git commit came from

TL;DR:

Aliases useful in scripting

Commit only reachable from only one branch

Commit reachable from multiple branches

Examples related to git