git: programmatically know by how much the branch is ahead/behind a remote branch

Question

I would like to extract the information that is printed after a git status, which looks like:

# On branch master
# Your branch is ahead of \'origin/         


        

Answer 1

You can try git branch -v -v. With -v flag given twice, it outputs names of upstream branches. Sample output:

* devel  7a5ff2c [origin/devel: ahead 1] smaller file status overlay icons
  master 37ca389 [origin/master] initial project check-in.

I think this format is more stable than git status output.