How to get SHA of the latest commit from remote git repository?

Question

Does anyone know how to get the latest SHA of a given branch from outside a git repository?

If you are inside a git repository, you can do:

Answer 1

If you just want the SHA-1 from the currently checked out branch of your local repo, you can just specify HEAD instead of origin/branch_X:

git --git-dir=/path/to/repo/.git rev-parse --verify HEAD

Answer 2

Use rev-parse

git rev-parse origin/master # to get the latest commit on the remote

git rev-parse HEAD          # to get the latest commit on the local 

Answer 3

References to branch heads are stored in the .git/refs/ tree. So you should be able to find the hash of the latest commit at:

cat .git/refs/remotes/origin/branch_X

Your path may differ slightly.

Answer 4

Using a git URL:

$ git ls-remote <URL> | head -1 | sed "s/HEAD//"

Using a directory on an accessible system:

$ git --git-dir=/path/to/repo/.git rev-parse origin/<targeted-banch>

Answer 5

A colleague of mine answered this for me:

git ls-remote ssh://git.dev.pages/opt/git/repos/dev.git <branch>

Answer 6

If you want to check SHA-1 of given branch in remote repository, then your answer is correct:

$ git ls-remote <URL>

However if you are on the same filesystem simpler solution (not requiring to extract SHA-1 from output) would be simply:

$ git --git-dir=/path/to/repo/.git rev-parse origin/branch_X

See git(1) manpage for description of '--git-dir' option.