Finding what branch a Git commit came from

Question

Is there a way to find out what branch a commit comes from given its SHA-1 hash value?

Bonus points if you can tell me how to accomplish this using Ruby Grit.

Answer 1

If the OP is trying to determine the history that was traversed by a branch when a particular commit was created ("find out what branch a commit comes from given its SHA-1 hash value"), then without the reflog there aren't any records in the Git object database that shows what named branch was bound to what commit history.

(I posted this as an answer in reply to a comment.)

Hopefully this script illustrates my point:

rm -rf /tmp/r1 /tmp/r2; mkdir /tmp/r1; cd /tmp/r1
git init; git config user.name n; git config user.email e@x.io
git commit -m"empty" --allow-empty; git branch -m b1; git branch b2
git checkout b1; touch f1; git add f1; git commit -m"Add f1"
git checkout b2; touch f2; git add f2; git commit -m"Add f2"
git merge -m"merge branches" b1; git checkout b1; git merge b2
git clone /tmp/r1 /tmp/r2; cd /tmp/r2; git fetch origin b2:b2
set -x;
cd /tmp/r1; git log --oneline --graph --decorate; git reflog b1; git reflog b2;
cd /tmp/r2; git log --oneline --graph --decorate; git reflog b1; git reflog b2;

The output shows the lack of any way to know whether the commit with 'Add f1' came from branch b1 or b2 from the remote clone /tmp/r2.

(Last lines of the output here)

+ cd /tmp/r1
+ git log --oneline --graph --decorate
*   f0c707d (HEAD, b2, b1) merge branches
|\
| * 086c9ce Add f1
* | 80c10e5 Add f2
|/
* 18feb84 empty
+ git reflog b1
f0c707d b1@{0}: merge b2: Fast-forward
086c9ce b1@{1}: commit: Add f1
18feb84 b1@{2}: Branch: renamed refs/heads/master to refs/heads/b1
18feb84 b1@{3}: commit (initial): empty
+ git reflog b2
f0c707d b2@{0}: merge b1: Merge made by the 'recursive' strategy.
80c10e5 b2@{1}: commit: Add f2
18feb84 b2@{2}: branch: Created from b1
+ cd /tmp/r2
+ git log --oneline --graph --decorate
*   f0c707d (HEAD, origin/b2, origin/b1, origin/HEAD, b2, b1) merge branches
|\
| * 086c9ce Add f1
* | 80c10e5 Add f2
|/
* 18feb84 empty
+ git reflog b1
f0c707d b1@{0}: clone: from /tmp/r1
+ git reflog b2
f0c707d b2@{0}: fetch origin b2:b2: storing head