# finding unmerged branches

7 messages from 2009-08-27 to 2009-08-28. Participants: Joey Hess, Avery Pennarun, Björn Steinbrink, Junio C Hamano.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/20763

## Joey Hess, 2009-08-27 22:02

Subject: finding unmerged branches
Message-ID: <20090827220241.GA1413@gnu.kitenet.net>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20090827220241.GA1413%40gnu.kitenet.net

```
My situation is this: My project has a lot of remotes with
lots of branches; about 250 branches in total. I want to
figure out which of these branches to look at to consider
merging.

So, I reach for git branch -a --no-merged master; that's what
its man page says its for. But this still finds 120 branches,
and a lot of them are not things I want to look at. Many of
them are copies of some of my own branches.

What I really want is a way to find remote branches that
are not merged with any of my local branches (or any origin
branches). A slow and stupid implementation of that is in the
attached git-unmerged script, and it weeds the branch list
down to 68 branches, which are mostly really ones I might
want to look at.

So, three questions:

* Is this situation somewhat common, or an I doing something wrong?
  (Assuming that I have a good reason to want to look at remote 
  branches rather than waiting to get merge requests.)
* Is there a better way to accomplish this than a slow perl script that
  runs git branch -r --merged foreach of my branches?
* Should git have something builtin to handle this case better?

-- 
see shy jo


#!/usr/bin/perl

my @remote_branches = split ' ', `git branch -r | awk '{print $1}'`;

# have to filter out the "* "
my @local_branches = split ' ', `git branch | sed 's/^..//'`;

my @origin_branches = grep /^origin\//, @remote_branches;

my %unmerged = (map { $_ => 1 } @remote_branches),
	(map { $_ => 0 } @local_branches, @origin_branches);

foreach my $branch (@local_branches, @origin_branches) {
	map { $unmerged{$_}=0 } split ' ', `git branch -r --merged "$branch" | awk '{print $1}'`
}

foreach my $branch (sort keys %unmerged) {
	print "$branch\n" if $unmerged{$branch};
}

```

## Avery Pennarun, 2009-08-27 22:22

Subject: Re: finding unmerged branches
Message-ID: <32541b130908271522u1048dcb1h67b79049e46df1ac@mail.gmail.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/32541b130908271522u1048dcb1h67b79049e46df1ac%40mail.gmail.com
In-Reply-To: <20090827220241.GA1413@gnu.kitenet.net>

```
On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 10:02 PM, Joey Hess<joey@kitenet.net> wrote:
> What I really want is a way to find remote branches that
> are not merged with any of my local branches (or any origin
> branches). A slow and stupid implementation of that is in the
> attached git-unmerged script, and it weeds the branch list
> down to 68 branches, which are mostly really ones I might
> want to look at.

How about:

gitk $(git for-each-ref --format='%(refname)' 'refs/remotes/'; git
for-each-ref --format='^%(refname)' 'refs/heads/')

You could also replace 'gitk' with 'git log', and mess with the
--pretty=format:whatever parameter.

Have fun,

Avery

```

## Björn Steinbrink, 2009-08-27 22:35

Subject: Re: finding unmerged branches
Message-ID: <20090827223504.GA18307@atjola.homenet>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20090827223504.GA18307%40atjola.homenet
In-Reply-To: <20090827220241.GA1413@gnu.kitenet.net>

```
On 2009.08.27 18:02:41 -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> My situation is this: My project has a lot of remotes with
> lots of branches; about 250 branches in total. I want to
> figure out which of these branches to look at to consider
> merging.
> 
> So, I reach for git branch -a --no-merged master; that's what
> its man page says its for. But this still finds 120 branches,
> and a lot of them are not things I want to look at. Many of
> them are copies of some of my own branches.
> 
> What I really want is a way to find remote branches that
> are not merged with any of my local branches (or any origin
> branches). A slow and stupid implementation of that is in the
> attached git-unmerged script, and it weeds the branch list
> down to 68 branches, which are mostly really ones I might
> want to look at.
> 
> So, three questions:
> 
> * Is this situation somewhat common, or an I doing something wrong?
>   (Assuming that I have a good reason to want to look at remote 
>   branches rather than waiting to get merge requests.)
> * Is there a better way to accomplish this than a slow perl script that
>   runs git branch -r --merged foreach of my branches?

Hm, not sure if I'd call it "better", but probably at least a bit
faster. You could create a "fake" merge to combine all the branches.

git branch -r --no-merged $(
  : | git commit-tree HEAD^{tree} $(
    git for-each-ref --format='-p %(refname)' \
      refs/heads/ \
      refs/remotes/origin
    )
  )

Björn

```

## Junio C Hamano, 2009-08-27 23:25

Subject: Re: finding unmerged branches
Message-ID: <7vd46gn8kn.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/7vd46gn8kn.fsf%40alter.siamese.dyndns.org
In-Reply-To: <20090827223504.GA18307@atjola.homenet>

```
Björn Steinbrink <B.Steinbrink@gmx.de> writes:

> Hm, not sure if I'd call it "better", but probably at least a bit
> faster. You could create a "fake" merge to combine all the branches.
>
> git branch -r --no-merged $(
>   : | git commit-tree HEAD^{tree} $(
>     git for-each-ref --format='-p %(refname)' \
>       refs/heads/ \
>       refs/remotes/origin
>     )
>   )

Heh, that is certainly a cute hack ;-)

```

## Joey Hess, 2009-08-28 00:44

Subject: Re: finding unmerged branches
Message-ID: <20090828004450.GA20964@gnu.kitenet.net>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20090828004450.GA20964%40gnu.kitenet.net
In-Reply-To: <20090827223504.GA18307@atjola.homenet>

```
Björn Steinbrink wrote:
> Hm, not sure if I'd call it "better", but probably at least a bit
> faster. You could create a "fake" merge to combine all the branches.
> 
> git branch -r --no-merged $(
>   : | git commit-tree HEAD^{tree} $(
>     git for-each-ref --format='-p %(refname)' \
>       refs/heads/ \
>       refs/remotes/origin
>     )
>   )

That does run fast. Has some warnings about duplicate parents. The gitk
method seems more useful.

-- 
see shy jo

```

## Joey Hess, 2009-08-28 00:54

Subject: Re: finding unmerged branches
Message-ID: <20090828005420.GB20964@gnu.kitenet.net>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20090828005420.GB20964%40gnu.kitenet.net
In-Reply-To: <32541b130908271522u1048dcb1h67b79049e46df1ac@mail.gmail.com>

```
Avery Pennarun wrote:
> How about:
> 
> gitk $(git for-each-ref --format='%(refname)' 'refs/remotes/'; git
> for-each-ref --format='^%(refname)' 'refs/heads/')
> 
> You could also replace 'gitk' with 'git log', and mess with the
> --pretty=format:whatever parameter.

I added 'refs/remotes/origin/' 'refs/tags/' to the list, and that's
almost perfect, thanks.

Though there was one remote branch where gitk showed a lot of commits
from origin/master before the unmerged changes in the branch. Could not
figure out why, git log doesn't show them.

-- 
see shy jo

```

## Joey Hess, 2009-08-28 02:08

Subject: Re: finding unmerged branches
Message-ID: <20090828020826.GA28782@gnu.kitenet.net>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/20090828020826.GA28782%40gnu.kitenet.net
In-Reply-To: <20090827220241.GA1413@gnu.kitenet.net>

```
Joey Hess wrote:
> * Is this situation somewhat common, or an I doing something wrong?
>   (Assuming that I have a good reason to want to look at remote 
>   branches rather than waiting to get merge requests.)

Come to think, the github fork queue serves basically the same purpose,
but only for branches in github.

-- 
see shy jo

```