Git Feature Request - show current branch

Hello,

To start with, I did not find an official way to submit feature request so hopefully this is the right way to do so - if not then my apologize & appreciate if somebody could re-submit to the proper place.

I'd like to request adding a parameter to 'git branch' that would only show the current branch (w/o the star) - i.e. the outcome should only be the name of the branch that is normally marked with the star when I do 'git branch' command. This may be very helpful in some external scripts that just simply need to know the name of the current branch. I know there are multiple ways to do this today (some described here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6245570/how-to-get-current-branch-name-in-git) but I really think that adding simple argument to 'git branch' would be very useful instead of forcing people to use 'workarounds'.

My suggestion is is to name the parameter '--current' or '--show-current'.
Example:

Command: git branch
Outcome:
 branchA
 branchB
* master

Command: git branch --current
Outcome:
master

Thank you,
Martin

Hi Martin,

I use:

git symbolic-ref --short HEAD

in scripts. Not sure it's the best way, but it works 100% for me.

Regards,
Randall

-----Original Message-----
From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org [mailto:git-owner@vger.kernel.org] On Behalf Of mdconf@seznam.cz
Sent: February 19, 2015 8:15 AM
To: git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Git Feature Request - show current branch

Hello,

To start with, I did not find an official way to submit feature request so hopefully this is the right way to do so - if not then my apologize & appreciate if somebody could re-submit to the proper place.

I'd like to request adding a parameter to 'git branch' that would only show the current branch (w/o the star) - i.e. the outcome should only be the name of the branch that is normally marked with the star when I do 'git branch' command. This may be very helpful in some external scripts that just simply need to know the name of the current branch. I know there are multiple ways to do this today (some described here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6245570/how-to-get-current-branch-name-in-git) but I really think that adding simple argument to 'git branch' would be very useful instead of forcing people to use 'workarounds'.

My suggestion is is to name the parameter '--current' or '--show-current'.
Example:

Command: git branch
Outcome:
 branchA
 branchB
* master

Command: git branch --current
Outcome:
master

Thank you,
Martin
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Randall S. Becker venit, vidit, dixit 19.02.2015 14:32:

git symbolic-ref --short HEAD

That errors out when HEAD is detached.

git rev-parse --symbolic-full-name [--abbrev-ref] HEAD

returns the branch name or HEAD. Though it's a bit difficult to discover.

I guess git 3.0 will have "git branch" and "git branches" :)

Michael