Tip: Find branches containing a specific Git commit

Git, Branch, Commit · May 25, 2023

Commits are the building blocks of Git, used to track changes to a repository. They can be used to identify specific points in a repository's history, and can be referenced by their commit hash. But apart from finding a commit, how can you find all the branches containing it? This sort of information can be useful when you want to find out which branches contain a specific bugfix or feature.

As usual, Git has a simple solution to this problem. Using git branch with the --contains flag will print all the branches containing a specific commit.

# Syntax: git branch --contains <commit>

git branch --contains 3050fc0
# development
# network-fixes

Similarly, you can look for branches that don't contain a specific commit by using the --no-contains flag.

# Syntax: git branch --no-contains <commit>

git branch --no-contains 3050fc0
# master
# adapter-feature

Written by Angelos Chalaris

I'm Angelos Chalaris, a JavaScript software engineer, based in Athens, Greece. The best snippets from my coding adventures are published here to help others learn to code.

If you want to keep in touch, follow me on GitHub.

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