List branches not merged to their upstream

Question

I'd like a command similar to git branch that will list all local branches that are not merged with their upstream.

This is something git branch knows about, as git branch -d <branch-name> will fail for branches that are not merged.

Answer 1

Are you looking for this:

git branch --no-merged

Above command will list out all the branches which are not merged to your current branch. if you need to check for other branch then

git branch --no-merged master

You can also compare upstream branches by specifying the -r flag and a ref to check against, which can be local or remote:

git branch -r --no-merged origin/master

Answer 2

As far as I know, there is no single built-in Git command to list all local branches that are behind their upstream branch (if any). However, you can implement the desired functionality using existing Git commands. See below.

Script

#!/bin/sh

# git-bbu.sh
#
# List the local Branches Behind their Upstream branch, if any.
#
# Usage: git bbu
#
# To make a Git alias called 'bbu' out of this script,
# put the latter on your search path, and run
#
#   git config --global alias.bbu \
#       '!sh git-bbu.sh'

if [ $# -ne 0 ]; then
    printf "%s\n\n" "usage: git bbu"
    exit 1
fi

git for-each-ref --format='%(refname:short)' refs/heads | \
    while read ref; do
      if (git rev-parse --verify --quiet "$ref"@{upstream} &&
          ! git diff --quiet "$ref"..."$ref"@{upstream}) \
              >/dev/null 2>&1; then
        printf "%s\n" "$ref"
      fi
    done

Explanation

Run

git for-each-ref --format='%(refname:short)' refs/heads

to list all local branches (Why not just use git branch, here? Because, in a script, you should try to use plumbing Git commands instead of porcelain ones). Pipe it to a while loop, and, for each such local branch,

• Check whether the local branch has an upstream branch, using

  git rev-parse --verify --quiet "$ref"@{upstream}
  

• Check whether the local branch is behind its upstream branch, using (the logical negation of)

  git diff --quiet "$ref"..."$ref"@{upstream}
  

If both conditions are verified, print the name of the branch.

References

• gitrevisions man page
• Is there a better way to find out if a local git branch exists?
• How can I programmatically (in a shell script) determine whether or not there are changes?

Answer 3

git for-each-ref has an "upstream" field, which can show if the branch is up-to-date with its upstream. You can then filter its output to show only those which are ahead of their upstreams:

$ git for-each-ref --format='%(upstream:trackshort)..%(refname:short)' | awk -F '\\.\\.' '$1~/>/{print $2}'

this skips branches which do not have upstreams, modify the filter if it's not what you need (the $1 is empty then in the awk record). ".." is used a a separator because you cannot have the sequence in reference name

• https://git-scm.com/docs/git-for-each-ref#_field_names