git-branch

I am using the following command to find out if a local git branch with branch-name exists in my repository. Is this correct? Is there a better way? Please note that I am doing this inside a script. For this reason I'd like to stay away from porcelain commands if possible. git show-ref --verify --quiet refs/heads/<branch-name> # $? == 0 means local branch with <branch-name> exists. Update Turns out there is another way . Thanks @jhuynh . git rev-parse --verify <branch-name> # $? == 0 means local branch with name <branch-name> exists. Mark Longair As far as I know, that's the best way to do it

I want to find out who created a branch. I am sort of able to do so with: git branch -a | xargs -L 1 bash -c 'echo "$1 `git log --pretty=format:"%H %an" $1^..$1`"' _ However, this returns the last committer per branch, not necessarily the person who created the branch. Christopher A branch is nothing but a commit pointer. As such, it doesn't track metadata like "who created me." See for yourself. Try cat .git/refs/heads/<branch> in your repository. That written, if you're really into tracking this information in your repository, check out branch descriptions. They allow you to attach arbitrary

When I use the git branch command to list all branches, I see the output of git branch | less . The command git branch is supposed to show a list of branches, like ls does for files. This is the output I get: How I get the default behaviour of git branch ? What causes the paged output? I am using ZSH with oh_my_zsh (nothing for Git in there), and my .gitconfig looks like this: [user] email = myemail@mail.com name = Dennis Haegler [push] default = simple [merge] tool = vimdiff [core] editor = nvim excludesfile = /Users/dennish/.gitignore_global [color] ui = true [alias] br = branch ci = commit

Is it possible to open a file in a git branch without checking out that branch? How? Essentially I want to be able to open a file in my github pages branch without switching branches all the time. I don't want to modify it, just want to view it. Scolytus This should work: git show branch:file Where branch can be any ref (branch, tag, HEAD, ...) and file is the full path of the file. To export it you could use git show branch:file > exported_file You should also look at VonC 's answers to some related questions: How to retrieve a single file from specific revision in Git? How to get just one

My colleague and I are working on the same repository we've branched it into two branches each technically for different projects, but they have similarities so we'll sometimes want to commit back to the * master from the branch . However, I have the branch . My question is, how can my colleague pull that branch specifically? A git clone of the repo does not seem to create the branches locally for him, though I can see them live on unfuddle after a push on my end. Also, when I originally made the branch I did -b checkout . Not sure if that makes much difference? $ git branch -r origin/HEAD ->