How to get the current checked out Git branch name through pygit2?

Question

This question should be related to:

But I am wondering how to do that through pygit2?

http://www.pygit2.org/references.html#the-head - `repo.head` didn't do what you wanted? — Andrew C, Oct 01 '14 at 04:21
Would you mind posting it as an answer? I believe that could also help others then :) — Drake Guan, Oct 01 '14 at 04:52

score 42 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 15 '16 at 02:55

42

To get the conventional "shorthand" name:

from pygit2 import Repository

Repository('.').head.shorthand  # 'master'

answered Apr 15 '16 at 02:55

Razzi Abuissa

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score 24 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 04 '20 at 00:55

In case you don't want to or can't use pygit2

May need to alter path - this assumes you are in the parent directory of .git

from pathlib import Path

def get_active_branch_name():

    head_dir = Path(".") / ".git" / "HEAD"
    with head_dir.open("r") as f: content = f.read().splitlines()

    for line in content:
        if line[0:4] == "ref:":
            return line.partition("refs/heads/")[2]

Andrew C · Accepted Answer · 2019-09-25T14:27:38.377

13

From PyGit Documentation

Either of these should work

#!/usr/bin/python
from pygit2 import Repository

repo = Repository('/path/to/your/git/repo')

# option 1
head = repo.head
print("Head is " + head.name)

# option 2
head = repo.lookup_reference('HEAD').resolve()
print("Head is " + head.name)

You'll get the full name including /refs/heads/. If you don't want that strip it out or use shorthand instead of name.

./pygit_test.py  
Head is refs/heads/master 
Head is refs/heads/master

edited Sep 25 '19 at 14:27

answered Oct 01 '14 at 04:57

Andrew C

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What is `repo` here? – Borhan Kazimipour Sep 24 '19 at 07:27
1

@BorhanKazimipour it's the reference to the repo you are working on repo = Repository('path/to/git_repo') – Andrew C Sep 24 '19 at 20:09

score 8 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 11 '20 at 21:30

8

You can use GitPython:

from git import Repo
local_repo = Repo(path=settings.BASE_DIR)
local_branch = local_repo.active_branch.name

answered Nov 11 '20 at 21:30

lennon310

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1

I managed to do this with just `Repo().head.ref.name`. This returns jsut the name of the branch. – havryliuk Sep 29 '22 at 10:58

How to get the current checked out Git branch name through pygit2?

4 Answers4

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