git: programmatically know by how much the branch is ahead/behind a remote branch

git git-status
Olivier Verdier picture Olivier Verdier · Jun 3, 2010 · Viewed 14.2k times · Source

I would like to extract the information that is printed after a git status, which looks like:

# On branch master
# Your branch is ahead of 'origin/master' by 2 commits.

Of course I can parse the output of git status but this is not recommended since this human readable output is liable to change.

There are two problems:

  1. How to know the remote tracked branch? It is often origin/branch but need not be.
  2. How to get the numbers? How to know whether it is ahead/behind? By how many commits? And what about the diverged branch case?

Answer

jamessan picture jamessan · Jun 3, 2010

git rev-list origin..HEAD will show the commits that are in your current branch, but not origin -- i.e., whether you're ahead of origin and by which commits.

git rev-list HEAD..origin will show the opposite.

If both commands show commits, then you have diverged branches.

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