List remote Git branches and the last commit date for each branch. Sort by most recent commit date.

git-branches-by-commit-date.sh

# Credit http://stackoverflow.com/a/2514279
for branch in `git branch -r | grep -v HEAD`;do echo -e `git show --format="%ci %cr" $branch | head -n 1` \\t$branch; done | sort -r

output.txt

# Example output (resulting from running command on the Rails repo — https://github.com/rails/rails)

2012-02-12 03:20:24 -0800 9 hours ago 	origin/master
2012-02-10 10:34:35 -0800 2 days ago 	origin/3-2-stable
2012-01-31 09:56:12 -0800 12 days ago 	origin/3-1-stable
2012-01-24 11:18:06 -0800 3 weeks ago 	origin/3-0-stable
2011-12-31 05:09:14 -0800 6 weeks ago 	origin/2-3-stable
2011-11-25 09:49:54 +0000 3 months ago 	origin/serializers
2011-06-16 12:08:26 -0700 8 months ago 	origin/compressor
2011-05-24 16:03:41 -0700 9 months ago 	origin/sass-cleanup
2011-01-17 14:14:24 +1300 1 year, 1 month ago 	origin/2-1-stable
2011-01-17 14:13:56 +1300 1 year, 1 month ago 	origin/2-2-stable
2010-08-17 17:11:17 -0700 1 year, 6 months ago 	origin/deps_refactor
2010-05-16 22:23:44 +0200 1 year, 9 months ago 	origin/encoding
2009-09-10 17:41:18 -0700 2 years, 5 months ago 	origin/2-0-stable
2008-02-19 02:09:55 +0000 4 years ago 	origin/1-2-stable

Is there a way to always get the date instead of the "X days ago" being used for recent dates? I really don't like that "adaptive" format and just want to see the dates. @Mazorius has the format I want for the dates, but it doesn't sort, so I'm hoping to get the best of both worlds.

@gerroon & @roschler: You have to use the sort program to get the sorting by age.

Use -a for local and remote branches, -r for remote only and -l for local only

git branch -[a,l,r] --format="%(committerdate:iso8601), %(committerdate:relative) - %(refname:short)" | grep -v [H]EAD | sort

recursive

git branch -[a,l,r] --format="%(committerdate:iso8601), %(committerdate:relative) - %(refname:short)" | grep -v [H]EAD | sort -r

Hello,
How I can execute this script at external repo, for example:

./git-branches-by-commit-date.sh http://github.com/my_repo

Thanks and a greeting

@tXambe Sorry I didn't have time to look into changing the script to take that parameter - but a quick workaround could be to simply first checkout your repo to your local machine then run the script (without your argument) from inside the repo. Hope it helps..

Using awk to truncate the commit message but otherwise re-using from above with colour and columns:

  git branch -r | grep -v HEAD | while read b; do git log --color --format="%ci _%C(magenta) %cr^ %C(bold cyan)$b%Creset^ %s^ %C(bold blue)%an%Creset" $b | head -n 1; done | sort -r | cut -d_ -f2- | sed 's;origin/;;g' | awk -F^ -vOFS=^ 'NR{$3=substr($3,1,60)}1' | head -10 | column -t -s '^'

Great work. Thanks!

Great!!!. Thanks! its work for me

Thank you!

太好了，谢谢你。
That's great. Thank you

Thank you!

Thank you Jason!

Put together a different variation based on a few examples: git branch -r --sort=-committerdate --format='%(HEAD)%(color:yellow)%(refname:short)|%(color:bold green)%(committerdate:relative)|%(color:blue)%(subject)|%(color:magenta)%(authorname)%(color:reset)' --color=always | column -ts'|'

Also, here's a version that works in Windows cmd and PowerShell (didn't find a good alternative for column command, but otherwise works fine): git branch -r --sort=-committerdate --format="%(HEAD)%(color:yellow)%(refname:short)|%(color:bold green)%(committerdate:relative)|%(color:blue)%(subject)|%(color:magenta)%(authorname)%(color:reset)" --color=always

Is there any way to automate that extract last commit date without cloning it on local machine

Users of tig might want to use tig refs – This outputs all local/remote branches and tags with their timestamp.

https://gist.github.com/Aniket7250 Am also looking for without cloning to get this functionality ..

Thanks!

Guys, I understand the commands that how can I list all remote/local branches along with when was it last commited, who made the last commit, last commit id, last commit message etc, sorted by committerdate .... but is there any way that I can list all branches that has their last commits within a date range ... just like we have --since and --until for git log ... for example, I want to list all branches that were being last commited before 6 months ago, or say, all branches that were last commited before "Jan 01 2021"

but is there any way that I can list all branches that has their last commits within a date range ... just like we have --since and --until for git log ... for example, I want to list all branches that were being last commited before 6 months ago, or say, all branches that were last commited before "Jan 01 2021"

I would like the same if possible. But, thanks for the current version as well!

Guys, I understand the commands that how can I list all remote/local branches along with when was it last commited, who made the last commit, last commit id, last commit message etc, sorted by committerdate .... but is there any way that I can list all branches that has their last commits within a date range ... just like we have --since and --until for git log ... for example, I want to list all branches that were being last commited before 6 months ago, or say, all branches that were last commited before "Jan 01 2021"

Yes, it's possible. Here's some information on comparing dates in Bash scripts, you'd want to extract the dates from the git output line-by-line, convert them from text to a comparable date format, and compare against your target date to know whether to display them or not:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/84381/how-to-compare-two-dates-in-a-shell

but is there any way that I can list all branches that has their last commits within a date range ... just like we have --since and --until for git log ... for example, I want to list all branches that were being last commited before 6 months ago, or say, all branches that were last commited before "Jan 01 2021"

I would like the same if possible. But, thanks for the current version as well!

See comment above.

Thanks for this

thx man 👍

Another way to do this via gitconfig aliases:

https://github.com/rsanheim/dotfiles/pull/34

You can use the command below if you want to filter the branches that were updated X - days ago.

git branch -r --format="%(committerdate:iso8601), %(committerdate:relative) - %(refname:short)" | grep -v [H]EAD | awk -v dateA="$(date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-%d) - 3 days" +%Y-%m-%d)" -F '|' 'dateA<=$1" "$2' | awk -F '/' '{ print $NF }'

From the above command replace the 3 days with your X no of days

Here's my version of this.

# Credit https://gist.github.com/jasonrudolph/1810768
# Credit http://stackoverflow.com/a/2514279
for branch in `git branch -r | grep -v HEAD`;
	do printf "%-40s\\t%20s\\n" $branch "`git show --format="%ci %cr" $branch | head -n 1`"; 
done | sort -k 2

Here's a version sorting by committer date, including colour formatting, that is easy to add as a git alias:

❯ git branch -a --sort=-creatordate --format='%(color:red)%(committerdate:iso8601)%(color:reset) %(align:8)(%(ahead-behind:HEAD))%(end) %(color:blue)%(align:40)%(refname:short)%(end)%(color:reset) %(color:white)%(contents:subject) %(color:yellow)(%(committerdate:relative))%(color:reset)'

Example output:

Git aliases:

[alias]
        br = "branch --format='%(color:red)%(committerdate:iso8601)%(color:reset) %(align:8)(%(ahead-behind:HEAD))%(end) %(color:blue)%(align:40)%(refname:short)%(end)%(color:reset) %(color:white)%(contents:subject) %(color:yellow)(%(committerdate:relative))%(color:reset)' --sort=-creatordate"
        newestb = "br --sort=-committerdate"
        oldestb = "br --sort=committerdate"

It can then be composed with other flags like -r, -a, --merged=main, etc.

@bjeanes this looks really nice but I get this error:

fatal: unknown field name: ahead-behind:HEAD

That’s interesting. What git version? I can’t think of a reason that HEAD wouldn’t be defined, but you could change it to ‘main’ or some other ref

Great thread, thank you!

@bjeanes was on 2.39.0, upgrading to the latest version of git solved the issue. Thank you!