Listing each branch and its last revision's date in Git

Question

I need to delete old and unmaintained branches from our remote repository. I\'m trying to find a way with which to list the remote branches by their last modified date, and

Answer 1

Sorted remote branches and the last commit date for each branch.

for branch in `git branch -r | grep -v HEAD`;do echo -e `git show --format="%ci %cr" $branch | head -n 1` \\t$branch; done | sort -r

Answer 2

Just to add to the comment by @VonC, take your preferred solution and add it to your ~/.gitconfig alias list for convenience:

[alias]  
    branchdate = !git for-each-ref --sort='-authordate' --format='%(refname)%09%(authordate)' refs/heads | sed -e 's-refs/heads/--'

Then a simple "git branchdate" prints the list for you...

Answer 3

Here is what I came up with after also reviewing this.

for REF in $(git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate --format="%(objectname)" \
    refs/remotes refs/heads)
do
    if [ "$PREV_REF" != "$REF" ]; then
        PREV_REF=$REF
        git log -n1 $REF --date=short \
            --pretty=format:"%C(auto)%ad %h%d %s %C(yellow)[%an]%C(reset)"
    fi
done

The PREV_REF check is to remove duplicates if more than one branch points to the same commit. (As in a local branch that exist in the remote as well.)

NOTE that per the OP request, git branch --merged and git branch --no-merged are useful in identifying which branches can be easily deleted.

[https://git-scm.com/docs/git-branch]

Answer 4

Here is what I use:

git for-each-ref --sort='-committerdate:iso8601' --format=' %(committerdate:iso8601)%09%(refname)' refs/heads

This is the output:

2014-01-22 11:43:18 +0100       refs/heads/master
2014-01-22 11:43:18 +0100       refs/heads/a
2014-01-17 12:34:01 +0100       refs/heads/b
2014-01-14 15:58:33 +0100       refs/heads/maint
2013-12-11 14:20:06 +0100       refs/heads/d/e
2013-12-09 12:48:04 +0100       refs/heads/f

For remote branches, just use "refs/remotes" instead of "refs/heads":

git for-each-ref --sort='-committerdate:iso8601' --format=' %(committerdate:iso8601)%09%(refname)' refs/remotes

Building on n8tr's answer, if you are also interested in the last author on the the branch, and if you have the "column" tool available, you can use:

git for-each-ref --sort='-committerdate:iso8601' --format='%(committerdate:relative)|%(refname:short)|%(committername)' refs/remotes/ | column -s '|' -t

Which will give you:

21 minutes ago  refs/remotes/a        John Doe
6 hours ago     refs/remotes/b        Jane Doe
6 days ago      refs/remotes/master   John Doe

You may want to call "git fetch --prune" before to have the latest information.

Answer 5

Here's a function you can add to your bash_profile to make this easier.

Usage when in a Git repository:

• branch prints all local branches
• branch -r prints all remote branches

Function:

branch() {
   local pattern="s/^..//"
   local arg=""
   if [[ $@ == "-r" ]]; then
      pattern="s/^..(.*?)( ->.*)?$/\1/"
      arg=" -r "
      echo '-r provided'
   fi
   for k in $(git branch $arg | perl -pe "$pattern"); do
      echo -e $(git show --pretty=format:"%Cgreen%ci %Cblue%cr%Creset" $k -- | head -n 1)\\t$k
   done | sort -r
}