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How can I query git to find out which branches contain a given commit? gitk will usually list the branches, unless there are too many, in which case it just says "many (38)" or something like that. I need to know the full list, or at least whether certain branches contain the commit.

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
1764

From the git-branch manual page:

 git branch --contains <commit>

Only list branches which contain the specified commit (HEAD if not specified). Implies --list. (Use '-a' option before '--contains' to look in all branches that you haven't checked out. e.g. git branch -a --contains <commit>)

 git branch -r --contains <commit>

Lists remote tracking branches as well (as mentioned in user3941992's answer below) that is "local branches that have a direct relationship to a remote branch".

As noted by Carl Walsh, this applies only to the default refspec

fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

If you need to include other ref namespace (pull request, Gerrit, ...), you need to add that new refspec, and fetch again:

git config --add remote.origin.fetch "+refs/pull/*/head:refs/remotes/origin/pr/*"
git fetch
git branch -r --contains <commit>

See also this git ready article.

The --contains tag will figure out if a certain commit has been brought in yet into your branch. Perhaps you’ve got a commit SHA from a patch you thought you had applied, or you just want to check if commit for your favorite open source project that reduces memory usage by 75% is in yet.

$ git log -1 tests
commit d590f2ac0635ec0053c4a7377bd929943d475297
Author: Nick Quaranto <[email protected]>
Date:   Wed Apr 1 20:38:59 2009 -0400

    Green all around, finally.

$ git branch --contains d590f2
  tests
* master

Note: if the commit is on a remote tracking branch, add the -a option.
(as MichielB comments below)

git branch -a --contains <commit>

MatrixFrog comments that it only shows which branches contain that exact commit.
If you want to know which branches contain an "equivalent" commit (i.e. which branches have cherry-picked that commit) that's git cherry:

Because git cherry compares the changeset rather than the commit id (sha1), you can use git cherry to find out if a commit you made locally has been applied <upstream> under a different commit id.
For example, this will happen if you’re feeding patches <upstream> via email rather than pushing or pulling commits directly.

           __*__*__*__*__> <upstream>
          /
fork-point
          \__+__+__-__+__+__-__+__> <head>

(Here, the commits marked '-' wouldn't show up with git cherry, meaning they are already present in <upstream>.)

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18 Comments

tests and master - master is the current branch, therefore the asterisk.
This only shows which branches contain that exact commit. If you want to know which branches contain an "equivalent" commit (i.e. which branches have cherry-picked that commit) that's git cherry: "Because git cherry compares the changeset rather than the commit id (sha1), you can use git cherry to find out if a commit you made locally has been applied <upstream> under a different commit id. For example, this will happen if you’re feeding patches <upstream> via email rather than pushing or pulling commits directly." kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-cherry.html
Add a -a parameter to also check remote branches.
You can also do git tag --contains <commit>. See Searching for all tags that contain a commit?.
For the git cherry part @UpAndAdam asked the question here: stackoverflow.com/questions/16304574/…, alas, the question has not (yet) been answered.
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You may run:

git log <SHA1>..HEAD --ancestry-path --merges

From comment of last commit in the output you may find original branch name

Example:

       c---e---g--- feature
      /         \
-a---b---d---f---h---j--- master

git log e..master --ancestry-path --merges

commit h
Merge: g f
Author: Eugen Konkov <>
Date:   Sat Oct 1 00:54:18 2016 +0300

    Merge branch 'feature' into master
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5 Comments

Nice! I used git log <SHA1>..master --ancestry-path --merges --oneline | tail -n1 to get this in one line
If you would like to use pure git command, you could use: git log <SHA1>..master --ancestry-path --merges --oneline -1
Note: When your commit sha is the most recent commit on the master/foo branch (HEAD)... you can't do an A..B commit range, just dont use a range like so:: git log HEAD --oneline -1 > 82c12a9 (HEAD, origin/remote-branch-name, origin/master, origin/dev, origin/HEAD, master, dev) commit message.
If this git repo is a submodule and you are trying to solve the detached HEAD problem... then you have a hard question of a preferred branch... In my previous example you could easily say that master is always preferred if it's in this list. From there it's less clear. You could try and read git branch from .gitmodules file: git config -f .gitmodules submodule.src/foo/submodule.branch. This could be a long standing fork/pr. You can cd to repo root and run git config submodule.src/foo/submodule.branch. You can also use the superprojects current git branch.
As a small aside: git config submodule.src/foo/submodule.branch Can be influenced by any variety of git configs, including a repo-local .gitconfig file. (requires running git config --local include.path ./path/to/your/.gitconfig)
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The answer for git branch -r --contains <commit> works well for normal remote branches, but if the commit is only in the hidden head namespace that GitHub creates for PRs, you'll need a few more steps.

Say, if PR #42 was from deleted branch and that PR thread has the only reference to the commit on the repo, git branch -r doesn't know about PR #42 because refs like refs/pull/42/head aren't listed as a remote branch by default.

In .git/config for the [remote "origin"] section add a new line:

fetch = +refs/pull/*/head:refs/remotes/origin/pr/*

(This gist has more context.)

Then when you git fetch you'll get all the PR branches, and when you run git branch -r --contains <commit> you'll see origin/pr/42 contains the commit.

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1 Comment

@VonC Thanks for improving my answer! I didn't realized I was doing git commit --add.

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