Find out which remote branch a local branch is tracking

Question

See also:
How can I see which Git branches are tracking which remote / upstream branch?

How can I find out which remote branch a local branch is tracking?

Do I need to parse git config output, or is there a command that would do this for me?

Answer 1

Here is a command that gives you all tracking branches (configured for 'pull'), see:

$ git branch -vv
  main   aaf02f0 [main/master: ahead 25] Some other commit
* master add0a03 [jdsumsion/master] Some commit

You have to wade through the SHA and any long-wrapping commit messages, but it's quick to type and I get the tracking branches aligned vertically in the 3rd column.

If you need info on both 'pull' and 'push' configuration per branch, see the other answer on git remote show origin.

---

Update

Starting in git version 1.8.5 you can show the upstream branch with git status and git status -sb

Answer 2

Two choices:

% git rev-parse --abbrev-ref --symbolic-full-name @{u}
origin/mainline

or

% git for-each-ref --format='%(upstream:short)' "$(git symbolic-ref -q HEAD)"
origin/mainline

Answer 3

I think git branch -av only tells you what branches you have and which commit they're at, leaving you to infer which remote branches the local branches are tracking.

git remote show origin explicitly tells you which branches are tracking which remote branches. Here's example output from a repository with a single commit and a remote branch called abranch:

$ git branch -av
* abranch                d875bf4 initial commit
  master                 d875bf4 initial commit
  remotes/origin/HEAD    -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/abranch d875bf4 initial commit
  remotes/origin/master  d875bf4 initial commit

versus

$ git remote show origin
* remote origin
  Fetch URL: /home/ageorge/tmp/d/../exrepo/
  Push  URL: /home/ageorge/tmp/d/../exrepo/
  HEAD branch (remote HEAD is ambiguous, may be one of the following):
    abranch
    master
  Remote branches:
    abranch tracked
    master  tracked
  Local branches configured for 'git pull':
    abranch merges with remote abranch
    master  merges with remote master
  Local refs configured for 'git push':
    abranch pushes to abranch (up to date)
    master  pushes to master  (up to date)

Answer 4

Update: Well, it's been several years since I posted this! For my specific purpose of comparing HEAD to upstream, I now use @{u}, which is a shortcut that refers to the HEAD of the upstream tracking branch. (See https://git-scm.com/docs/gitrevisions#gitrevisions-emltbranchnamegtupstreamemegemmasterupstreamememuem ).

Original answer: I've run across this problem as well. I often use multiple remotes in a single repository, and it's easy to forget which one your current branch is tracking against. And sometimes it's handy to know that, such as when you want to look at your local commits via git log remotename/branchname..HEAD.

All this stuff is stored in git config variables, but you don't have to parse the git config output. If you invoke git config followed by the name of a variable, it will just print the value of that variable, no parsing required. With that in mind, here are some commands to get info about your current branch's tracking setup:

LOCAL_BRANCH=`git name-rev --name-only HEAD`
TRACKING_BRANCH=`git config branch.$LOCAL_BRANCH.merge`
TRACKING_REMOTE=`git config branch.$LOCAL_BRANCH.remote`
REMOTE_URL=`git config remote.$TRACKING_REMOTE.url`

In my case, since I'm only interested in finding out the name of my current remote, I do this:

git config branch.$(git name-rev --name-only HEAD).remote

Answer 5

The local branches and their remotes.

git branch -vv 

All branches and tracking remotes.

git branch -a -vv

See where the local branches are explicitly configured for push and pull.

git remote show {remote_name}

Answer 6

git branch -vv | grep 'BRANCH_NAME'

git branch -vv : This part will show all local branches along with their upstream branch .

grep 'BRANCH_NAME' : It will filter the current branch from the branch list.

Answer 7

This will show you the branch you are on:

$ git branch -vv

This will show only the current branch you are on:

$ git for-each-ref --format='%(upstream:short)' $(git symbolic-ref -q HEAD)

for example:

myremote/mybranch

You can find out the URL of the remote that is used by the current branch you are on with:

$ git remote get-url $(git for-each-ref --format='%(upstream:short)' $(git symbolic-ref -q HEAD)|cut -d/ -f1)

for example:

https://github.com/someone/somerepo.git

Answer 8

You can use git checkout, i.e. "check out the current branch". This is a no-op with a side-effects to show the tracking information, if exists, for the current branch.

$ git checkout 
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.

Answer 9

Yet another way

git status -b --porcelain

This will give you

## BRANCH(...REMOTE)
modified and untracked files

Answer 10

I don't know if this counts as parsing the output of git config, but this will determine the URL of the remote that master is tracking:

$ git config remote.$(git config branch.master.remote).url

Answer 11

git-status porcelain (machine-readable) v2 output looks like this:

$ git status -b --porcelain=v2
# branch.oid d0de00da833720abb1cefe7356493d773140b460
# branch.head the-branch-name
# branch.upstream gitlab/the-branch-name
# branch.ab +2 -2

And to get the branch upstream only:

$ git status -b --porcelain=v2 | grep -m 1 "^# branch.upstream " | cut -d " " -f 3-
gitlab/the-branch-name

If the branch has no upstream, the above command will produce an empty output (or fail with set -o pipefail).

Answer 12

Another simple way is to use

cat .git/config in a git repo

This will list details for local branches

Answer 13

Display only current branch info without using grep:

git branch -vv --contains

This is short for:

git branch -vv --contains HEAD

and if your current HEAD's commit id is in other branches, those branches will display also.

Answer 14

Another method (thanks osse), if you just want to know whether or not it exists:

if git rev-parse @{u} > /dev/null 2>&1
then
  printf "has an upstream\n"
else
  printf "has no upstream\n"
fi

Answer 15

git branch -r -vv

will list all branches including remote.

Answer 16

You can try this :

git remote show origin | grep "branch_name"

branch_name needs to be replaced with your branch

Answer 17

Lists both local and remote branches:

$ git branch -ra

Output:

  feature/feature1
  feature/feature2
  hotfix/hotfix1
* master
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/develop
  remotes/origin/master

Answer 18

If you want to find the upstream for any branch (as opposed to just the one you are on), here is a slight modification to @cdunn2001's answer:

git rev-parse --abbrev-ref --symbolic-full-name YOUR_LOCAL_BRANCH_NAME@{upstream}

That will give you the remote branch name for the local branch named YOUR_LOCAL_BRANCH_NAME.

Answer 19

Having tried all of the solutions here, I realized none of them were good in all situations:

• works on local branches
• works on detached branches
• works under CI

This command gets all names:

git branch -a --contains HEAD --list --format='%(refname:short)'

For my application, I had to filter out the HEAD & master refs, prefer remote refs, and strip off the word 'origin/'. and then if that wasn't found, use the first non HEAD ref that didn't have a / or a ( in it.

Answer 20

Improving on this answer, I came up with these .gitconfig aliases:

branch-name = "symbolic-ref --short HEAD"
branch-remote-fetch = !"branch=$(git branch-name) && git config branch.\"$branch\".remote || echo origin #"
branch-remote-push  = !"branch=$(git branch-name) && git config branch.\"$branch\".pushRemote || git config remote.pushDefault || git branch-remote-fetch #"
branch-url-fetch = !"remote=$(git branch-remote-fetch) && git remote get-url        \"$remote\" #"  # cognizant of insteadOf
branch-url-push  = !"remote=$(git branch-remote-push ) && git remote get-url --push \"$remote\" #"  # cognizant of pushInsteadOf

Answer 21

I use this alias

git config --global alias.track '!sh -c "
if [ \$# -eq 2 ]
 then
   echo \"Setting tracking for branch \" \$1 \" -> \" \$2;
   git branch --set-upstream \$1 \$2;
 else
   git for-each-ref --format=\"local: %(refname:short) <--sync--> remote: %(upstream:short)\" refs/heads && echo --URLs && git remote -v;
fi  
" -'

then

git track

note that the script can also be used to setup tracking.

More great aliases at https://github.com/orefalo/bash-profiles

Answer 22

Following command will remote origin current fork is referring to

git remote -v

For adding a remote path,

git remote add origin path_name

Answer 23

If you are using Gradle,

def gitHash = new ByteArrayOutputStream()
    project.exec {
        commandLine 'git', 'rev-parse', '--short', 'HEAD'
        standardOutput = gitHash
    }

def gitBranch = new ByteArrayOutputStream()
    project.exec {
        def gitCmd = "git symbolic-ref --short -q HEAD || git branch -rq --contains "+getGitHash()+" | sed -e '2,\$d'  -e 's/\\(.*\\)\\/\\(.*\\)\$/\\2/' || echo 'master'"
        commandLine "bash", "-c", "${gitCmd}"
        standardOutput = gitBranch
    }

Answer 24

git branch -vv | grep 'hardcode-branch-name'
# "git rev-parse --abbrev-ref head" will get your current branch name
# $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref head) save it as string
#  find the tracking branch by grep filtering the current branch 
git branch -vv | grep $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref head)

Answer 25

I use EasyGit (a.k.a. "eg") as a super lightweight wrapper on top of (or along side of) Git. EasyGit has an "info" subcommand that gives you all kinds of super useful information, including the current branches remote tracking branch. Here's an example (where the current branch name is "foo"):

pknotz@s883422: (foo) ~/workspace/bd
$ eg info
Total commits:      175
Local repository: .git
Named remote repositories: (name -> location)
  origin -> git://sahp7577/home/pknotz/bd.git
Current branch: foo
  Cryptographic checksum (sha1sum): bd248d1de7d759eb48e8b5ff3bfb3bb0eca4c5bf
  Default pull/push repository: origin
  Default pull/push options:
    branch.foo.remote = origin
    branch.foo.merge = refs/heads/aal_devel_1
  Number of contributors:        3
  Number of files:       28
  Number of directories:       20
  Biggest file size, in bytes: 32473 (pygooglechart-0.2.0/COPYING)
  Commits:       62