Question

Given a local / remote branch name, how could I get the hash of the commit that this branch points to?

Answer 1

The command git rev-parse is your friend, e.g.:

$ git rev-parse development
17f2303133734f4b9a9aacfe52209e04ec11aff4

… or for a remote-tracking branch:

$ git rev-parse origin/master
da1ec1472c108f52d4256049fe1f674af69e785d

This command is generally very useful, since it can parse any of the ways of specifying branch names in git, such as:

git rev-parse master~3
git rev-parse HEAD@{2.days.ago}

… etc.