How to determine when a Git branch was created

Question

Is there a way to determine when a Git branch was created  I have a branch in my repo and and I don t remember creating it and thought maybe seeing the creation timestamp would jog my memory

User · Answer

If you want to get the details for all the branches  for i in  git branch -r   tail -n  2   do git log --reverse  i grep -A 2 -B 2  echo  i   awk -F origin     print  2     head -n 4  done

User · Answer

First  if you branch was created within gc reflogexpire days  default 90 days  i e  around 3 months   you can use git log -g  lt branch gt  or git reflog show  lt branch gt  to find first entry in reflog  which would be creation event  and looks something like below  for git log -g    Reflog   lt branch gt    lt nn gt    C R Eator  lt creator example com gt   Reflog message  branch  Created from  lt some other branch gt    You would get who created a branch  how many operations ago  and from which branch  well  it might be just  Created from HEAD   which doesn t help much    That is what MikeSep said in his answer     Second  if you have branch for longer than gc reflogexpire and you have run git gc  or it was run automatically   you would have to find common ancestor with the branch it was created from   Take a look at config file  perhaps there is branch  lt branchname gt  merge entry  which would tell you what branch this one is based on   If you know that the branch in question was created off master branch  forking from master branch   for example  you can use the following command to see common ancestor   git show   git merge-base  lt branch gt  master    You can also try git show-branch  lt branch gt  master  as an alternative   This is what gbacon said in his response

User · Answer

syntax   git reflog --date local   grep checkout    grep   current branch    tail -1   example   git reflog --date local   grep checkout    grep dev-2 19 0   tail -1   result   cc7a3a8ec HEAD  Wed Apr 29 14 58 50 2020   checkout  moving from dev-2 18 0 to dev-2 19 0

User · Answer

As pointed out in the comments and in Jackub s answer  as long as your branch is younger than the number of days set in the config setting gc reflogexpire  the default is 90 days   then you can utilize your reflog to find out when a branch reference was first created   Note that git reflog can take most git log flags  Further note that the HEAD  0  style selectors are effectively notions of time and  in fact  are handled  in a hacked sort of way  as date strings  This means that you can use the flag --date local and get output like this     git reflog --date local 763008c HEAD  Fri Aug 20 10 09 18 2010   pull   Fast-forward f6cec0a HEAD  Tue Aug 10 09 37 55 2010   pull   Fast-forward e9e70bc HEAD  Thu Feb 4 02 51 10 2010   pull   Fast forward 836f48c HEAD  Thu Jan 21 14 08 14 2010   checkout  moving from master to master 836f48c HEAD  Thu Jan 21 14 08 10 2010   pull   Fast forward 24bc734 HEAD  Wed Jan 20 12 05 45 2010   checkout  moving from 74fca6a42863ffacaf7ba6f1936a9f228950f657  74fca6a HEAD  Wed Jan 20 11 55 43 2010   checkout  moving from master to v2 6 31 24bc734 HEAD  Wed Jan 20 11 44 42 2010   pull   Fast forward 964fe08 HEAD  Mon Oct 26 15 29 29 2009   checkout  moving from 4a6908a3a050aacc9c3a2f36b276b46c0629ad91  4a6908a HEAD  Mon Oct 26 14 52 12 2009   checkout  moving from master to v2 6 28   It may also be useful at times to use --date relative     git reflog --date relative 763008c HEAD  4 weeks ago   pull   Fast-forward f6cec0a HEAD  6 weeks ago   pull   Fast-forward e9e70bc HEAD  8 months ago   pull   Fast forward 836f48c HEAD  8 months ago   checkout  moving from master to master 836f48c HEAD  8 months ago   pull   Fast forward 24bc734 HEAD  8 months ago   checkout  moving from 74fca6a42863ffacaf7ba6f1936a9f228950f657 to master 74fca6a HEAD  8 months ago   checkout  moving from master to v2 6 31 24bc734 HEAD  8 months ago   pull   Fast forward 964fe08 HEAD  11 months ago   checkout  moving from 4a6908a3a050aacc9c3a2f36b276b46c0629ad91 to master 4a6908a HEAD  11 months ago   checkout  moving from master to v2 6 28   One last note  the --all flag  which is really a git-log flag understood by git-reflog  will show the reflogs for all known refs in refs   instead of simply  HEAD  which will show you branch events clearly   git reflog --date local --all 860e4e4 refs heads master  Sun Sep 19 23 00 30 2010   commit  Second  17695bc refs heads example branch  Mon Sep 20 00 31 06 2010   branch  Created from HEAD

User · Answer

This did it for me   10 years later   git log  --remotes  --no-walk --decorate   Since there is no stored information on branch creation times  what this does is display the first commit of each branch  --no-walk   which includes the date of the commit  Use --remotes for the remote branches  or omit it for local branches   Since I do at least one commit in a branch before creating another one  this permitted me trace back a few months of branch creations  and feature dev-start  for documentation purposes   source  AnoE on stackexchange

User · Answer

I m not sure of the git command for it yet  but I think you can find them in the reflogs    git logs refs heads  lt yourbranch gt    My files appear to have a unix timestamp in them   Update  There appears to be an option to use the reflog history instead of the commit history when printing the logs   git log -g   You can follow this log as well  back to when you created the branch  git log is showing the date of the commit  though  not the date when you made the action that made an entry in the reflog  I haven t found that yet except by looking in the actual reflog in the path above

User · Answer

very simple In the address bar of your web browser  type the following URL and press the Enter key to retrieve information of a GitHub repository  https   api github com repos   owner    repository  Note  In the URL above  replace the   owner  and   repository  parts with the values that can be found in the URL of the GitHub repository for which you want to know the creation date  For example  if the URL of the repository is https   github com ArthurGareginyan batch-rename   then the URL of it   s information will be https   api github com repos ArthurGareginyan batch-rename  output

User · Answer

Combined with the answer from Andrew Sohn  https   stackoverflow com a 14265207 1929406   branchcreated   git reflog show --date format   Y- m- d  H  M  S  --all   sed  s    refs  refs      grep   master    tail -1  cut -d    -f 2  cut -d    -f 1   xargs  echo  branchcreated

User · Answer

Try this    git for-each-ref --format    committerdate   09   authorname   09   refname

User · Answer

This is something that I came up with before I found this thread   git reflog show --date local --all   sed  s    refs  refs      grep   master    tail -1 git reflog show --date local --all   sed  s    refs  refs      grep  branch

User · Answer

Pro Git  sect  3 1 Git Branching - What a Branch Is has a good explanation of what a git branch really is     A branch in Git is simply a lightweight movable pointer to  a  commit    Since a branch is just a lightweight pointer  git has no explicit notion of its history or creation date   But hang on   I hear you say   of course git knows my branch history   Well  sort of   If you run either of the following   git log  lt branch gt  --not master gitk  lt branch gt  --not master   you will see what looks like the  history of your branch   but is really a list of commits reachable from  branch  that are not reachable from master  This gives you the information you want  but if and only if you have never merged  branch  back to master  and have never merged master into  branch  since you created it  If you have merged  then this history of differences will collapse   Fortunately the reflog often contains the information you want  as explained in various other answers here  Use this   git reflog --date local  lt branch gt    to show the history of the branch  The last entry in this list is  probably  the point at which you created the branch   If the branch has been deleted then  branch  is no longer a valid git identifier  but you can use this instead  which may find what you want   git reflog --date local   grep  lt branch gt    Or in a Windows cmd shell   git reflog --date local   find   lt branch gt     Note that reflog won t work effectively on remote branches  only ones you have worked on locally

User · Answer

Use  git show --summary  git merge-base foo master   If you   d rather see it in context using gitk  then use  gitk --all --select-commit  git merge-base foo master    where foo is the name of the branch you are looking for

User · Answer

I found the best way  I always check the latest branch created by this way  git for-each-ref --sort -committerdate refs heads

User · Answer

This commands shows the created date of branch dev from main   git reflog show --date iso dev  7a2b33d dev  2012-11-23 13 20 28 -2100   branch  Created from main

User · Answer

Use   git reflog   to show all the living cycle of your repository in current folder  The branch name that first appear  from down to up  is the source that was created   855a3ce HEAD  0   checkout  moving from development to feature-sut-46 855a3ce HEAD  1   checkout  moving from feature-sut-46 to development 855a3ce HEAD  2   checkout  moving from feature-jira35 to feature-sut-46 535dd9d HEAD  3   checkout  moving from feature-sut-46 to feature-jira35 855a3ce HEAD  4   checkout  moving from development to feature-sut-46 855a3ce HEAD  5   checkout  moving from feature-jira35 to development 535dd9d HEAD  6   commit  insert the format for vendor specific brower - screen css 855a3ce HEAD  7   checkout  moving from development to feature-jira35 855a3ce HEAD  8   checkout  moving from master to development   That mean     Branch development is created  checkout -b  from master Branch feature-jira35 is created  checkout -b  from development Branch feature-jira-sut-46 is created  checkout -b  from development

[git] How to determine when a Git branch was created?

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