Git Revisions

What is HEAD, upstream, @{u}, @~3, HEAD..@{upstream}, etc.? Those are things well cover in this text.

NOTE: This text is a work in progress.

Upstream and remote tracking branches¶

When we push a branch to a remote repository, we can use --set-upstream or or its short form -u to tell git to keep an eye out for differences between the local branch and its remote (upstream).

$ git push origin --set-upstream drafts

That is, after se “set upstream” for a branch, git status, git checkout (and possibly a few other commands) inform us of differences between them.

E.g.:

$ git status
On branch drafts
Your branch is behind 'gl/drafts' by 3 commits, and can be fast-forwarded.

$ git checkout typescript 
Switched to branch 'typescript'
Your branch is up to date with 'gl/typescript'.

So, it means there are tree commits in upstream that are not present on our local branch. We are on the drafts branch. How to find out what its upstream is?

$ git branch --verbose --verbose

It will show all local branches with their upstreams. Of course, one could grep the output. Another alternative is to use git rev-parse:

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

References¶

• Git revisions official docs (or git --help gitrevisions on the command line).
• Git rev-parse man page (or git --help rev-parse on the command line).