Finding a branch point with Git?

Question

I have a repository with branches master and A and lots of merge activity between the two. How can I find the commit in my repository when branch A was created based on mast

Answer 1

Here's an improved version of my previous answer previous answer. It relies on the commit messages from merges to find where the branch was first created.

It works on all the repositories mentioned here, and I've even addressed some tricky ones that spawned on the mailing list. I also wrote tests for this.

find_merge ()
{
    local selection extra
    test "$2" && extra=" into $2"
    git rev-list --min-parents=2 --grep="Merge branch '$1'$extra" --topo-order ${3:---all} | tail -1
}

branch_point ()
{
    local first_merge second_merge merge
    first_merge=$(find_merge $1 "" "$1 $2")
    second_merge=$(find_merge $2 $1 $first_merge)
    merge=${second_merge:-$first_merge}

    if [ "$merge" ]; then
        git merge-base $merge^1 $merge^2
    else
        git merge-base $1 $2
    fi
}