Relationship between n git branches

Question

If I have n git branches, how do I easily show the relationship between these branches?

Basically I am interested in seeing a tree of a subset of all the branches in my repository. I am however not interested in all the intermediate commits.

E.g.: My repository looks like this:

     o---o--o A
    /      /
o--o--o--o--o--o B
 \  \        \
  \  o--o C   \
   \     \     \
    o--o--o--o--o--o D

But probably way more complicated. Now I want to see the relationship between branch A, C and D. Something along the lines of:

     o A
    /
o--o--o
   \   \
    o---o C
         \
          o--o D

Or an equivalent overview. Is this possible, and how? (A graphical tool will be just fine.)

Solution

Based on Antoine Pelisses answer, the below line seems to do (almost) exactly what I want:

git log --graph --decorate --oneline --simplify-by-decoration A B C

Update

Mark Longair points out in his answer below that gitk accepts the same parameters as git rev-list, so it is possible to do:

gitk --simplify-by-decoration A C D

score 51 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 14 '11 at 13:15

51

You can give this a try:

git log --graph --all --decorate --simplify-by-decoration

It will only show commits that are branch heads or tagged.

answered Mar 14 '11 at 13:15

Antoine Pelisse

12,871
4
34
34

2

This looks very good. Adding the `--oneline` helps me a bit. Now if I could only choose a subset of all my branches. :) – Bjarke Freund-Hansen Mar 14 '11 at 13:19
6

@bjarkef: You can - just change `--all` to `A C D` – Mark Longair Mar 14 '11 at 13:25
@Mark: Thanks, obviously. :) `git log --graph --decorate --oneline --simplify-by-decoration A B C` seems to do exactly what I want. – Bjarke Freund-Hansen Mar 14 '11 at 13:33
1

@bjarkef: indeed - I didn't know about `--simplify-by-decoration`, but it's very nice (+1) – Mark Longair Mar 14 '11 at 13:40
1

@Dolphin: You will have to create an alias (check on this page: http://www.git-scm.com/docs/git-config) – Antoine Pelisse Nov 29 '13 at 13:45

score 20 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 09 '19 at 11:33

20

I would use:

gitk A C D

... there are probably other git GUIs that produce a prettier rendering of the commit graph, but I've always found gitk fine for this purpose. All the branches and tags are labelled in the "London Underground"-style representation:

_{(source: mark at mythic-beasts.com)}

You can also use the --simplify-by-decoration option to gitk, since it understands all of the parameters that git rev-list does, for example:

gitk --simplify-by-decoration A C D

A screenshot of gitk with the --simplify-by-decoration option

edited Aug 09 '19 at 11:33

Glorfindel

21,988
13
81
109

answered Mar 14 '11 at 13:19

Mark Longair

446,582
72
411
327

I also use gitk (and gitg) a lot. However, I have a case where I have around 5 branches, which each has several hundreds commits on them, and somewhere in between there are merges between these branches. Getting a overview of the merge history is very hard with gitk (or gitg). – Bjarke Freund-Hansen Mar 14 '11 at 13:31
2

Right. I think if it's a case that's that complicated, I would probably just care about whether a particular branch has already been merge into another one and use command-line tools to explore that. I think someone might have deleted a comment on your question that suggested using `git branch --contains C` for this purpose, which is indeed very helpful - it shows you all the branches that include the tip of the branch C (and so contain the complete history of branch C). – Mark Longair Mar 14 '11 at 13:38
2

@bjarkef: just as an additional note, I should have pointed out that you can use the --simplify-by-decoration option with gitk as well - I've updated my answer with a mention of that. – Mark Longair Mar 19 '11 at 08:52
That looks very useful, I will be sure to give it a try Monday. Thanks. – Bjarke Freund-Hansen Mar 19 '11 at 12:57

Relationship between n git branches

2 Answers2

Linked