git can I view the reflog of a remote?

Question

Is it possible to view the reflog of a remote? That is, I want to know what the output of git reflog is on another remote machine.

Note, I am not asking for the reflog of remote-tracking branches (such as origin/master), I am asking for what reflog says on the other machine.

Answer 1

On the off chance that the remote machine is a github repository,

1. First use Github’s Events API to retrieve the commit SHA.
   curl https://api.github.com/repos/<user>/<repo>/events

2. Identify the SHA of the orphan commit-id that no longer exists in any branch.

3. Next, use Github’s Refs API to create a new branch pointing to the orphan commit.

   curl -i -H "Accept: application/json" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d '{"ref":"refs/heads/D-commit", "sha":"<orphan-commit-id>"}' https://api.github.com/repos/<user>/<repo>/git/refs

   Replace <orphan-commit-id> in the above command with the SHA identified in step 2.

4. Finally git fetch the newly created branch into your local repository.
   From there you can cherry-pick or merge the commit(s) back into your work.

Check out this article for an actual example.

Answer 2

The answer is basically "no" (except on that machine), because the reflog is a log of locally-made re-assignments of some ref-name. Essentially, every time you run git update-ref -m msg <name> <target> the update is logged ... locally: .git/logs/<name> gets a line appended:

$ git update-ref -m foo HEAD HEAD^ $ tail -1 .git/logs/HEAD 2418b6ba8fd0289933c9351260a272b8e410867f 8d945134b0cead535d66af29c8eb4228b5dc3763 [redacted] <[redacted]> 1334106483 -0600     foo 

(the thing before the message, in this case foo, is not spaces but rather a tab; I expanded it for SO purposes). Conceptually, everything else that moves a branch tip invokes git update-ref to do it (some are shell scripts and literally do that, others just invoke the C code that does all the file-updating) ... and everything in .git/logs makes up the reflog.

If there were things in the underlying git:// and/or ssh:// protocols that let you get at the reflog, that would do it, but as far as I know there isn't.