How do I get the name of the parent branch?

How do I get the name of the parent branch?

[Bruce Korb]

Google results point to how to get to commits that have gone into
parent branches, but fundamentally I just want to have a script
that constructs a diff of what has changed since the latest branch
without having to do manual research to figure out the name.

As best as I can tell, you use:

    git format-patch -o pdir --ignore-if-in-upstream $branch

the hard part seems to be (but ought not be) figuring out
the value for "$branch".

Re: How do I get the name of the parent branch?

[Jay Soffian]

On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 12:49 PM, Bruce Korb <bruce.korb@gmail.com> wrote:
> Google results point to how to get to commits that have gone into
> parent branches, but fundamentally I just want to have a script
> that constructs a diff of what has changed since the latest branch
> without having to do manual research to figure out the name.
>
> As best as I can tell, you use:
>
>   git format-patch -o pdir --ignore-if-in-upstream $branch
>
> the hard part seems to be (but ought not be) figuring out
> the value for "$branch".

Depending upon how you created the currently checked out branch, git
recorded the parent (which is usually referred to as the "upstream"
branch these days) in .git/config, and you can get this information
thusly:

  $ git rev-parse --abbrev-ref @{upstream}

(But you should not be afraid to look at .git/config and see where
this information is recorded. Look for a section named [branch
"$branch].)

Of course, you can use @{upstream} directly:

  $ git log @{u}..  # @{u} is a synonym for @{upstream}
  $ git diff @{u}

j.