Version Control with Git

Viewing Branches

The git show-branch command provides more detailed output than git branch, listing the commits that contribute to one or more branches in roughly reverse chronological order. As with git branch, no options list the topic branches, -r shows remote tracking branches, and -a shows all branches.

Let’s look at an example:

$ git show-branch
! [bug/pr-1] Fix Problem Report 1
 * [dev] Improve the new development
  ! [master] Added Bob's fixes.
---
 *  [dev] Improve the new development
 *  [dev^] Start some new development.
+   [bug/pr-1] Fix Problem Report 1
+*+ [master] Added Bob's fixes.

The git show-branch output is broken down into two sections separated by a line of dashes. The section above the separator lists the names of branches enclosed in square brackets, one per line. Each branch name is associated with a single column of output, identified by either an exclamation mark or—if it is also the current branch—an asterisk. In the example just shown, commits within the branch bug/pr-1 start in the first column, commits within the current branch dev start in the second column, and commits in the third branch master start in the third column. For quick reference, each branch in the upper section is also listed with the first line of the log message from the most recent commit on that branch.

The lower section of output is a matrix stating which commits are present in each branch. Again, each commit is listed with the first log message line from that commit. A commit is present in ...