How can I get a list of Git branches, ordered by m

Question

I want to get a list of all the branches in a Git repository with the "freshest" branches at the top, where the "freshest" branch is the one that's been committed to most recently (and is, therefore, more likely to be one I want to pay attention to).

Is there a way I can use Git to either (a) sort the list of branches by latest commit, or (b) get a list of branches together with each one's last-commit date, in some kind of machine-readable format?

Worst case, I could always run git branch to get a list of all the branches, parse its output, and then git log -n 1 branchname --format=format:%ci for each one, to get each branch's commit date. But this will run on a Windows box, where spinning up a new process is relatively expensive, so launching the Git executable once per branch could get slow if there are a lot of branches. Is there a way to do all this with a single command?

Answer 1

As of git 2.19 you can simply:

git branch --sort=-committerdate

You can also:

git config branch.sort -committerdate

So whenever you list branches in the current repository, it will be listed sorted by committerdate.

If whenever you list branches, you want them sorted by comitterdate:

git config --global branch.sort -committerdate

Disclaimer: I'm the author of this feature in git, I implemented it when I saw this question.

Answer 2

Use the --sort=-committerdate option of git for-each-ref;

Also available since Git 2.7.0 for git branch:

Basic Usage:

git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate refs/heads/

# Or using git branch (since version 2.7.0)
git branch --sort=-committerdate  # DESC
git branch --sort=committerdate  # ASC

Result:

Advanced Usage:

git for-each-ref --sort=committerdate refs/heads/ --format='%(HEAD) %(color:yellow)%(refname:short)%(color:reset) - %(color:red)%(objectname:short)%(color:reset) - %(contents:subject) - %(authorname) (%(color:green)%(committerdate:relative)%(color:reset))'

Result:

Answer 3

I like using a relative date and shortening the branch name like this:

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

Which gives you output:

21 minutes ago  nathan/a_recent_branch
6 hours ago     master
27 hours ago    nathan/some_other_branch
29 hours ago    branch_c
6 days ago      branch_d

I recommend making a bash file for adding all your favorite aliases and then sharing the script out to your team. Here's an example to add just this one:

#!/bin/sh

git config --global alias.branches "!echo ' ------------------------------------------------------------' && git for-each-ref --sort='-authordate:iso8601' --format=' %(authordate:relative)%09%(refname:short)' refs/heads && echo ' ------------------------------------------------------------'"

Then you can just do this to get a nicely formatted and sorted local branch list:

git branches

Update: Do this if you want coloring:

#!/bin/sh
#
(echo ' ------------------------------------------------------------‌​' && git for-each-ref --sort='-authordate:iso8601' --format=' %(authordate:relative)%09%(refname:short)' refs/heads && echo ' ------------------------------------------------------------‌​') | grep --color -E "$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)$|$"

Answer 4

Git v2.19 introduces branch.sort config option (see branch.sort).

So git branch will sort by committer date (desc) by default with

# gitconfig
[branch]
    sort = -committerdate     # desc

script:

$ git config --global branch.sort -committerdate

Update:

So,

$ git branch
* dev
  master
  _

and

$ git branch -v
* dev    0afecf5 Merge branch 'oc' into dev
  master 652428a Merge branch 'dev'
  _      7159cf9 Merge branch 'bashrc' into dev

Answer 5

List of git branch names, ordered by most recent commit…

Expanding on Jakub’s answer and Joe’s tip, the following will strip out the "refs/heads/" so the output only displays the branch names:

---

Command:

git for-each-ref --count=30 --sort=-committerdate refs/heads/ --format='%(refname:short)'

---

Result:

Answer 6

The other answers don't seem to allow passing -vv to get verbose output.

So here's a one-liner that sorts git branch -vv by commit date, preserving color etc:

git branch -vv --color=always | while read; do echo -e $(git log -1 --format=%ct $(echo "_$REPLY" | awk '{print $2}' | perl -pe 's/\e\[?.*?[\@-~]//g') 2> /dev/null || git log -1 --format=%ct)"\t$REPLY"; done | sort -r | cut -f 2

If you additionally want to print the commit date, you can use this version instead:

git branch -vv --color=always | while read; do echo -e $(git log -1 --format=%ci $(echo "_$REPLY" | awk '{print $2}' | perl -pe 's/\e\[?.*?[\@-~]//g') 2> /dev/null || git log -1 --format=%ci)" $REPLY"; done | sort -r | cut -d ' ' -f -1,4-

Sample output:

2013-09-15   master                  da39a3e [origin/master: behind 7] Some patch
2013-09-11 * (detached from 3eba4b8) 3eba4b8 Some other patch
2013-09-09   my-feature              e5e6b4b [master: ahead 2, behind 25] WIP

It's probably more readable split into multiple lines:

git branch -vv --color=always | while read; do
    # The underscore is because the active branch is preceded by a '*', and
    # for awk I need the columns to line up. The perl call is to strip out
    # ansi colors; if you don't pass --color=always above you can skip this
    local branch=$(echo "_$REPLY" | awk '{print $2}' | perl -pe 's/\e\[?.*?[\@-~]//g')
    # git log fails when you pass a detached head as a branch name.
    # Hide the error and get the date of the current head.
    local branch_modified=$(git log -1 --format=%ci "$branch" 2> /dev/null || git log -1 --format=%ci)
    echo -e "$branch_modified $REPLY"
# cut strips the time and timezone columns, leaving only the date
done | sort -r | cut -d ' ' -f -1,4-

This should also work with other arguments to git branch, e.g. -vvr to list remote-tracking branches, or -vva to list both remote-tracking and local branches.