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I clone my source using git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/p/mediawiki/core.git w/. Then I specify a specific branch/tag by doing git checkout <tag name> or git checkout origin/REL<release number>. Sometimes I forget what branch I'm on.

In SVN I would do a svn info to figure out what branch I'm using.

How do I determine what branch/tag I am on?

Tom Hale
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Son of the Wai-Pan
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  • Does this answer your question? [How do I get the current branch name in Git?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6245570/how-do-i-get-the-current-branch-name-in-git) – Tom Hale Jul 11 '23 at 06:31

7 Answers7

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git branch

tells you what branch you're on (with a * marker).

Tags are just names for revisions, so Git won't tell you that you're "on" a tag, but you can use git name-rev HEAD to get a sense for what it might be.

Amber
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  • `git branch` just gives me: `* (no branch) master`. BUT `git name-rev HEAD` does exactly what I want it to. – Son of the Wai-Pan Mar 25 '12 at 05:23
  • You get `(no branch)` because you're not "on a branch" anymore. You have what git calls a "detached HEAD" (which, as someone noted, is rather graphic if you think about it :-) ). Anyway, it's important to keep in mind that "being on a branch", in git terms, requires that you be at the *tip* of the branch. Otherwise you're "detached". If you add new commits when you're "detached", you create a new, unnamed branch. – torek Mar 25 '12 at 19:20
5

The current branch is marked with a * in the output of git branch. Example:

$ git branch
  branch1
* branch2
  master
Carl Norum
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How do I determine what branch/tag I am on?

First, since Git 2.22 (Q2 2019), you have git branch --show-current which directly shows you your current checked out branch.

Second, it won't show anything if you are in a checked out worktree (created with git worktree add)

For that, check Git 2.23 (Q3 2019), with its "git branch --list" which learned to show branches that are checked out in other worktrees connected to the same repository prefixed with '+', similar to the way the currently checked out branch is shown with '*' in front.

Example:

git branch in Git 2.23b4

See commit 6e93814, commit ab31381, commit 2582083 (29 Apr 2019) by Nickolai Belakovski (``).
(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 99eea64, 09 Jul 2019)

branch: add worktree info on verbose output

To display worktree path for refs checked out in a linked worktree

The git branch documentation now states:

The current branch will be highlighted in green and marked with an asterisk.
Any branches checked out in linked worktrees will be highlighted in cyan and marked with a plus sign.

Community
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VonC
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Some sed and regex magic:

git reflog | grep "checkout: moving from" | sed -n '1p' | sed -e 's/^[[:alnum:]]\+ HEAD@{[[:digit:]]\+}: checkout: moving from \([^[:space:]]\+\) to \([^[:space:]]\+\)$/\2/'
cladelpino
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Why not consider using a nice prompt for your shell?
Starship for Bash or Oh My Zsh for Zsh, or several superb ones are out there.
I'm in love with starship personally :)
https://github.com/CrazyOptimist/dotfiles
You will keep track of more than git branch info once you adopt one.

crazyoptimist
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  • While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference. Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes. - [From Review](/review/late-answers/31759308) – Kuro Neko May 17 '22 at 03:46
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git branch

using this command tells you at what branch you are by an * marker.

Parham Abolghasemi
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If you use the bash shell, you can use __git_ps1 in your bash prompt to show this, for example:

[me@myhost:~/code/myproject] (master)$ ls

Download git-completion.bash to ~/.git-completion.bash

Then in your ~/.bashrc file, add

source ~/.git-completion.bash

Then set your PS1 value to something including $(__git_ps1 "(%s)"), something like:

PS1="[\u@\h:\w]\$(__git_ps1)\\$ "
dbr
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  • per the comments in `git-completion.bash` I believe that function has been extracted to a dedicated script https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/contrib/completion/git-prompt.sh – Jeff Puckett Jul 25 '17 at 15:44