How to check if remote branch exists on a given remote repository?

Question

I need to do a subtree merge for a specific branch, if it exists on a given remote repository. The problem is that the remote repository is not checked out locally, so I can

Answer 1

All of the answers here are Linux shell-specific, which doesn't help very much if you're in an environment that doesn't support those sort of operations - for example, Windows' command prompt.

Fortunately git ls-remote accepts an --exit-code argument that returns 0 or 2 depending on whether the branch exists or not, respectively. So:

git ls-remote --exit-code --heads origin

will return 0, and

git ls-remote --exit-code --heads origin

will return 2.

For PowerShell, you can simply use the built-in truthiness handling semantics:

if (git ls-remote --heads origin ) { $true } else { $false }

yields $true, while:

if (git ls-remote --heads origin ) { $true } else { $false }

yields $false.