Git Log All Branches

I can’t be the only person who always seems to be switching between multiple development branches. Sometimes I get distracted for a few days (I’m also part time, which doesn’t help!) and then I can’t even remember what I was doing or what the branch was called.

The remedy for this situation? The --all switch to git log.

Usually I use git log with --oneline, mostly also with --decorate, often with --graph, and in this specific scenario, also with --all to show reachable commits other than ones that HEAD descended from. The result looks something like this:

git-log-all-cropped

Here you can see there are a couple of branches which come off master (on the left) and haven’t yet been merged back in. It’s very useful to be able to spot these!

Another tip for GitHub users is to click on “branches” when viewing a repo on the web – by default it shows you the unmerged ones.

5 thoughts on “Git Log All Branches

  1. Pingback: What's the difference between git reflog and log? - QuestionFocus

  2. In a “multi-person” team something like that could also be useful:

    git log –format=’format:%h %cs %s (%an)’ –all | grep “your name” | grep “2023-11” | less

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