Question

I found this answer already: Number of commits on branch in git
but that assumes that the branch was created from master.

How can I count the number of commits along a branch without relying on that assumption?

In SVN this is trivial, but for some reason is really difficult to figure out in git.

Answer 1

To count the commits for the branch you are on:

git rev-list --count HEAD

for a branch

git rev-list --count <branch-name>

If you want to count the commits on a branch that are made since you created the branch

git rev-list --count HEAD ^<branch-name>

This will count all commits ever made that are not on the branch-name as well.

Examples

git checkout master
git checkout -b test
<We do 3 commits>
git rev-list --count HEAD ^master

Result: 3

If your branch comes of a branch called develop:

git checkout develop
git checkout -b test
<We do 3 commits>
git rev-list --count HEAD ^develop

Result: 3

Ignoring Merges

If you merge another branch into the current branch without fast forward and you do the above, the merge is also counted. This is because for git a merge is a commit.

If you don’t want to count these commits add --no-merges:

git rev-list --no-merges --count HEAD ^develop