79

Given a project with several local branches, each tracking some remote branch, is there a command that lists all branches that have unpushed commits? (That is, even if none of those branches are checked out.)

I don't want to see the commits themselves, nor do I want to see branches that are up-to-date, I just want to see which branches are ahead of their remotes.

I have tried git log --branches --not --remotes --simplify-by-decoration --decorate --oneline, but it doesn't seem to show what I need. Running it on my current repo gives no output, but running git status on my current branch shows Your branch is ahead of 'origin/branchname' by 2 commits.

git for-each-ref --format="%(refname:short) %(push:track)" refs/heads and git branch -v both show branches that are up to date as well as ones that need pushing. However, they do both show my current branch as [ahead 2].

Other commands I have found eg. git log @{u}.., git cherry -v list the commits themselves, not the branches.

Side question: why would the output from git log --branches --not --remotes --simplify-by-decoration --decorate --oneline not include branches that git branch -v shows as ahead? Isn't the former command just looking at which refs/heads do not correspond to a known remote; so wouldn't a branch listed as [ahead 2] meet this criteria?

Improve this question
7
  • 1
    Possible duplicate of Show git ahead and behind info for all branches, including remotes
    – Tim Biegeleisen
    Commented Aug 30, 2016 at 7:06
  • @TimBiegeleisen Interesting, but the accepted answer is a Bash script (I use Linux/OSX/Windows), and the other answer gives nearly empty output.
    – detly
    Commented Aug 30, 2016 at 7:12
  • 1
    @TimBiegeleisen Okay, I've identified the problem and this is indeed a duplicate.
    – detly
    Commented Aug 30, 2016 at 7:14
  • 1
    I felt that the effort needed to give you a high quality answer would far exceed doing a thorough search here on SO and elsewhere.
    – Tim Biegeleisen
    Commented Aug 30, 2016 at 7:16
  • 1
    @TimBiegeleisen Hah, I've been searching all day for this, and I didn't think to use the terms "ahead" and "behind" (or "track" etc.)!
    – detly
    Commented Aug 30, 2016 at 7:18

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
111

The --no-walk option to log seems to do a better job of what I need than --simplify-by-decoration. My full command is:

git log --branches --not --remotes --no-walk --decorate --oneline

...which I've aliased to unpushed.

Improve this answer
9
  • 1
    In constrast to @VonC's answer this does show branches with no corresponding remotes, so YMMV depending on your workflow. For mine, this is preferable :)
    – detly
    Commented Jan 10, 2018 at 5:42
  • 7
    Or, if you have multiple remotes: git log --branches --not --remotes=origin --no-walk --decorate --oneline to see what you haven't pushed to the origin remote.
    – Benedikt Köppel
    Commented Aug 13, 2018 at 18:52
  • 1
    @BenediktKöppel Ah that's a good idea, I do often work with multiple remotes.
    – detly
    Commented Aug 13, 2018 at 22:11
  • 13
    For me this also shows branches which are behind the remote and can be fast-forwarded. Those branches do not have unpushed local changes.
    – sigy
    Commented Nov 30, 2018 at 15:01
  • 1
    This was not useful for me. It lists basically every branch, even though exactly 0 have unpushed commits.
    – Steve Bennett
    Commented Jul 10, 2023 at 0:50
14 
git for-each-ref --format="%(refname:short) %(push:track)" refs/heads

That remain the most precise answer that you can easily parse/grep to get the desired output (like removing up-to-date branches)

You can do so in a bash script that you will call git-xxx (no extension), somewhere in your $PATH or %PATH%.
That script can then be called with git xxx, and will use git bash.
That is portable and will work across platforms (meaning even on Windows, where <Git For Windows>/usr/bin includes 200+ linux commands (grep, sed, awk, xargs, ...)

Improve this answer
2
  • 1
    Note that this doesn't highlight branches that are not tracking a remote (and which therefore have all unpushed commits).
    – Tamlyn
    Commented Jan 9, 2018 at 14:12
  • 1
    @Tamlyn I agree. In the context of this question however, I focused only on local branches which have set a remote tracking branch.
    – VonC
    Commented Jan 9, 2018 at 14:23
7

although the answers above are very helpful and show alot of data but for others coming here looking for a solution to find local branches which are ahead i.e. have not been pushed yet. can get the exact list by executing:

git branch -v | grep ahead
Improve this answer
4
  • Not sure if this works reliably... I just tried it after a commit (no push) to an existing branch and no ahead text appears in the git branch -v command. This is with Git version git version 2.24.3 (Apple Git-128). It did, however, work with an older Git version, git version 2.13.0.windows.1
    – Jason Capriotti
    Commented Apr 23, 2021 at 18:18
  • I should also mention the test that did work on the older Git version was for a branch that existed on the remote and had a local un-pushed commit. However, it does not work for branches that do not exist on the remote (but I'm not sure if OP was asking about that scenario or not).
    – Jason Capriotti
    Commented Apr 23, 2021 at 18:21
  • I modified it to find all branches out of sync with this: git branch -v |grep 'ahead\|behind'
    – Martin P.
    Commented Jun 30, 2022 at 19:05
  • This does not show branches with no upstream at all, which could be a significant gotcha... It also doesn't work if the terminal language is not English.
    – Emil Styrke
    Commented Jun 20, 2023 at 6:59
5

You can also see what branches are not yet merged to master

git checkout master

and then

git branch --no-merged
Improve this answer
1
  • You can seemingly do this without checking out the branch first: "With --merged, only branches merged into the named commit (i.e. the branches whose tip commits are reachable from the named commit) will be listed. With --no-merged only branches not merged into the named commit will be listed. If the <commit> argument is missing it defaults to HEAD (i.e. the tip of the current branch)." git-scm.com/docs/git-branch
    – Glenn 'devalias' Grant
    Commented Jul 8, 2021 at 3:58

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.