From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Bruce Korb <bruce.korb@gmail.com>
Subject: How do I get the name of the parent branch?
Date: Sun, 03 Jul 2011 09:49:19 -0700
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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".