How to find the nearest parent of a Git branch?

Question

Let\'s say I have the following local repository with a commit tree like this:

master --> a
            \\
             \\
      develop c --> d
               


        

Answer 1

@Mark Reed: You should add that the commit line should not only contain an asterisk, but begin with an asterisk! Otherwise commit messages that contain an asterisk are also included in the matched lines. So it should be:

git show-branch -a | awk -F'[]^~[]' '/^\*/ && !/'"$current_branch"'/ {print $2;exit}'

or the long version:

git show-branch -a           |
  awk '^\*'                  | # we want only lines that contain an asterisk
  awk -v "$current_branch"   | # but also don't contain the current branch
  head -n1                   | # and only the first such line
  sed 's/.*\[\(.*\)\].*/\1/' | # really, just the part of the line between []
  sed 's/[\^~].*//'            # and with any relative refs (^, ~n) removed`