Showing branch hierarchy at the command line?

Question

I\'m curious if there is a way to show branch hierarchy on the command line? For instance if I use git branch, instead of seeing output like this:

*         


        

Answer 1

I want to complete the answer of @ctcherry.

I like when I can also see the user who did the commit and the date, so this is the following line to use :

git log --all --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit

However this is a pretty long line and difficult to memorize so you can use an alias. You just have to use this in your terminal :

git config --global alias.lg "HERE GOES MY BIG LOG COMMAND LINE"

---

To summarize copy and paste the line below on your terminal:

git config --global alias.lg "log --all --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit"

Then you will just have to use git lg to get your log history tree.

Example:

src

Answer 2

sehe's solution looks great, here is another one that seems to contain similar information, formatted differently, it uses git log, so it contains commit information as well (ignore the branch names, I kind of messed them up!):

git log --all --graph --decorate --oneline --simplify-by-decoration

* ae038ad (HEAD, branch2-1) add content to tmp1
| * f5a0029 (branch2-1-1) Add another
|/  
* 3e56666 (branch1) Second wave of commits
| * 6c9af2a (branch1-2) add thing
|/  
* bfcf30a (master) commit 1

Answer 3

Try

git show-branch
git show-branch --all

Example output:

bash$ git show-branch --all
! [branchA] commitA only in branchA
 * [branchB] commitB
  ! [branchC] commitC only in branchC
---------------------
+   [branchA] commitA only in branchA 
 *  [branchB] commitB
  + [branchC] commitC only in branchC
 *+ [branchC~1] commitB-1 also in branchC
 *+ [branchC~2] commitB-2 also in branchC
+++ [branchC~3] common ancestor
+++ [branchC~4] more common ancestors

Answer 4

How about this alias for your .gitconfig:

[alias]
branch-tree = !cd "$(git rev-parse --git-dir)/refs/heads" && tree

You can also give options, depending on what your tree command supports, such as -D for timestamps.

Answer 5

Just type gitk command and press enter.

For me gitk is the easiest solution for this. Though it will not show you command mode, it will automatically populate a nice UI like this :

Answer 6

That's not how branches work from git's point of view. If I make some commits to branch a, create branch b from it, work there, and then do other work back on a:

A -- B -- D <-- a
       \
        \
          C <-- b

That's indistinguishable if you did it the other way around:

A -- B -- C <-- b
       \
        \
          D <-- a

The only way I can think of to find out from which branch certain branch originated is the reflog, but that's unreliable (entries older than 90 days are usually deleted).