How to programmatically determine the current checked out Git branch

Question

In a Unix or GNU scripting environment  e g  a Linux distro  Cygwin  OSX   what is the best way to determine which Git branch is currently checked out in a working directory   One use of this technique would be automatically labeling a release  like svnversion would do with Subversion    Please also see my related question  How to programmatically determine whether a Git checkout is a tag  and if so what is the tag name

User · Accepted Answer

The correct solution is to take a peek at contrib/completions/git-completion.bash does that for bash prompt in __git_ps1. Removing all extras like selecting how to describe detached HEAD situation, i.e. when we are on unnamed branch, it is:

branch_name="$(git symbolic-ref HEAD 2>/dev/null)" ||
branch_name="(unnamed branch)"     # detached HEAD

branch_name=${branch_name##refs/heads/}

git symbolic-ref is used to extract fully qualified branch name from symbolic reference; we use it for HEAD, which is currently checked out branch.

Alternate solution could be:

branch_name=$(git symbolic-ref -q HEAD)
branch_name=${branch_name##refs/heads/}
branch_name=${branch_name:-HEAD}

where in last line we deal with the detached HEAD situation, using simply "HEAD" to denote such situation.

Added 11-06-2013

Junio C. Hamano (git maintainer) blog post, Checking the current branch programatically, from June 10, 2013 explains whys (and hows) in more detail.

User · Answer

Same results as accepted answer in a one-line variable assignment   branch name    git symbolic-ref HEAD 2 gt  dev null    echo   unnamed branch    cut -d  -f3-

User · Answer

If you are on a detached head  i e  you ve checked out a release  and have an output from git status such as   HEAD detached at v1 7 3 1   And you want the release version  we use the following command     git status --branch   head -n1   tr -d  A-Za-z      This returns 1 7 3 1  which we replace in our parameters yml  Symfony  with     RevNum  svn status -u   grep revision   tr -d  A-Za-z        the old SVN version RevNum  git status --branch   head -n1   tr -d  A-Za-z       Git  obvs   sed -i        app version  c     app version  RevNum  app config parameters yml   Hope this helps    Obviously if you have non-numerics in your branch name  you ll need to alter the arguments to the tr command

User · Answer

I found two really simple ways to do that     git status   head -1   cut -d     -f 4   and    git branch   grep       cut -d     -f 2

User · Answer

If you are using gradle        def gitHash   new ByteArrayOutputStream       project exec                   commandLine  git    rev-parse    --short    HEAD                  standardOutput   gitHash                def gitBranch   new ByteArrayOutputStream      project exec                   def gitCmd    git symbolic-ref --short -q HEAD    git branch -rq --contains   getGitHash       sed -e  2   d   -e  s                         2      echo  master                   commandLine  bash    -c      gitCmd                   standardOutput   gitBranch

User · Answer

I m trying for the simplest and most self-explanatory method here   git status   grep  On branch    cut -c 11-

User · Answer

I found that calling git is rather slow  any of the subcommands    especially for updating the prompt  Time varies between  1 and  2 seconds within the root dir of a repo  and over  2 seconds outside a repo  on a top notch machine  raid 1  8 gb ram  8 hardware threads   It does run Cygwin  though   Therefore I wrote this script for speed      usr bin perl   cwd  ENV PWD     pwd   chomp  cwd   while  length  cwd            -d   cwd  git  and do                   -f   cwd  git HEAD  and do                           open IN    lt      cwd  git HEAD                               lt IN gt                           close IN                          s ref  refs heads                             print                                        exit                       cwd  s                May need some tweaking

User · Answer

This one works for me  The --no-color part is  or can be  important if you want a plain string back   git branch --no-color   sed -e         d  -e  s           1

User · Answer

Does anyone see anything wrong with just asking Git to describe the branch you are on   git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name --abbrev-ref HEAD   That can be used within     and passed easily in Bash  Powershell  Perl  etc   It isn t fooled if you have several branches on the commit you are on  and if you currently aren t on a branch  it simply replies with  HEAD    Alternatively  you can use  git symbolic-ref --short -q HEAD   Which will give you the same output  but it won t return anything at all if you are detached   This one is useful if you want an error when detached though  just remove the -q

User · Answer

Here is what I do   git branch   sed --quiet  s           1 p    The output would look like this     git branch   sed --quiet  s           1 p  master

User · Answer

Try with    git symbolic-ref --short -q HEAD   Or you try with git branch with --no-color force simple plain string the output    git branch  --no-color   With grep in regex mode -E  you can check if exists the character        git branch  --no-color    grep -E          The results its similar to     currentBranch   You can use the next options   sed  s     a-z    g  cut -d     -f 2 awk   print  2     for example    git branch  --no-color    grep -E         sed  s     a-z    g   git branch  --no-color    grep -E         sed cut -d     -f 2  git branch  --no-color    grep -E         awk   print  2     if exists a error you cant use an default value     cmd    echo  defualt value     All into in a bash function   function get branch           git branch --no-color   grep -E         awk   print  2                echo  default value          or         git symbolic-ref --short -q HEAD    echo  default value       Use   branch name  get branch   echo  branch name

User · Answer

Here s my solution  suitable for use in a PS1  or for automatically labeling a release   If you are checked out at a branch  you get the branch name   If you are in a just init d git project  you just get      If you are headless  you get a nice human name relative to some branch or tag  with an     preceding the name   If you are headless and not an ancestor of some branch or tag you just get the short SHA1   function we are in git work tree       git rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree  amp  gt   dev null    function parse git branch       if we are in git work tree     then     local BR   git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name --abbrev-ref HEAD 2 gt   dev null      if     BR     HEAD       then         local NM   git name-rev --name-only HEAD 2 gt   dev null          if     NM     undefined           then echo -n    NM          else git rev-parse --short HEAD 2 gt   dev null         fi     else         echo -n  BR     fi     fi     You can remove the if we are in git work tree bit if you like  I just use it in another function in my PS1 which you can view in full here  PS1 line with git current branch and colors

User · Answer

From this answer  https   stackoverflow com a 1418022 605356      git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD master   Apparently works with Git 1 6 3 or newer

User · Answer

Someone mentioned doing it in bash with less than three assignments    how about some messy control flow like this   branch name    b   git symbolic-ref -q HEAD       -n   b     amp  amp  echo   b  refs heads         echo HEAD

User · Answer

This one worked for me in the bash file   git branch   grep        sed  s                           bash file                       bin bash BRANCH   git branch   grep        sed  s         echo  BRANCH

User · Answer

you can use  git name-rev --name-only HEAD

User · Answer

That s one solution  If you add it to your  bashrc  it ll display the current branch in the console     git branch parse git branch         git branch 2 gt   dev null   sed -e         d  -e  s            1        PS1     parse git branch  PS1    However it s pretty limited  But there is a great project called git sh  which is doing exactly that  and much more

User · Answer

Using --porcelain gives a backwards-compatible output easy to parse   git status --branch --porcelain   grep        cut -c 4-  From the documentation   The porcelain format is similar to the short format  but is guaranteed not to change in a backwards-incompatible way between Git versions or based on user configuration  This makes it ideal for parsing by scripts    https   git-scm com docs git-status

User · Answer

If you re using the old NT command line  you can use the following    for  f  usebackq   i in   git symbolic-ref -q HEAD   do  echo   ni   To use in a batch file  you ll have to double the   s    for  f  usebackq    i in   git symbolic-ref -q HEAD   do  echo    ni

User · Answer

adapting the accepted answer to windows powershell   Split-Path -Leaf  git symbolic-ref HEAD

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