[vtk-developers] Git tool for tracing merged branches?

[Olesen, Mark]

> To my knowledge, there is no way to get what branch a commit was
> created on because that information is not stored.  Commits are
> identified only by their SHA and only record the parent commits from
> which they derive.  A branch is really just a pointer to some commit.
> When the branch moves or goes away, there is no record of it ever
> having pointed to a particular commit.

This is indeed the problem.
The only solution I can think of is brute force:
1. specify which commit you want to trace
2. get a list of all possible branches (or specify some)
3. walk each branch and see if you encounter the specified commit

As pseudo-code:

# define your value
commit=...... 

# check it is a valid commit
info="$(git cat-file -t $commit)"
rc=$?
if [ $rc -ne 0 ]
then
    echo "$info" 1>&2
    exit $rc
elif [ "$info" != commit ]
then
    echo "Not a commit: $info" 1>&2
    exit 1
fi


# use all branches or specify some others
branches=$(git branch -al | sed -e s/^..//)

where=$(
    for branch in $branches
    do
        echo "check branch: $branch" 1>&2
        git rev-list $branch | grep -qe "^$commit"
        [ $? -eq 0 ] && echo $branch
    done
)

echo
echo "commit $commit is in these branches:"
echo $where | tr '\n' ' '
echo



If the commit in question has been cherry-picked to another branch, this
won't help you much though.

/mark



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