Question

On a github project you can go to a /branches page and se pretty graphs like this one that for each branch show how far behind and how far ahead each branch is with respect to master.

Is there a command line tool that does something similar? Something that works with remotes as well? For example,

git branch -v -v

is close to what I am looking for, but only works for local branches.

Answer 1

I’ve been curious about this as well, so i just whipped up a git branch-status script that gives this information using git for-each-ref

#!/bin/bash
# by http://github.com/jehiah
# this prints out some branch status (similar to the '... ahead' info you get from git status)
 
# example:
# $ git branch-status
# dns_check (ahead 1) | (behind 112) origin/master
# master (ahead 2) | (behind 0) origin/master
 
git for-each-ref --format="%(refname:short) %(upstream:short)" refs/heads | \
while read local remote
do
    [ -z "$remote" ] && continue
    git rev-list --left-right "${local}...${remote}" -- 2>/dev/null >/tmp/git_upstream_status_delta || continue
    LEFT_AHEAD=$(grep -c '^<' /tmp/git_upstream_status_delta)
    RIGHT_AHEAD=$(grep -c '^>' /tmp/git_upstream_status_delta)
    echo "$local (ahead $LEFT_AHEAD) | (behind $RIGHT_AHEAD) $remote"
done

Usage:

$ git branch-status
dns_check (ahead 1) | (behind 112) origin/master
master (ahead 2) | (behind 0) origin/master