git - how to get default branch?

Question

My team alternates between usage of dev and master as default branch for several repos and I would like to write a script that checks for the default branch when entering a directory.

When pull requests are opened in some of these repos, they either default to 'dev' or 'master' as the merge target.

I understand how to set this information but not retrieve it: https://help.github.com/articles/setting-the-default-branch/

Is there a git command available to determine default branch for remote repository?

Answer 1

I found a way to detect the default-branch if it is not master.

git remote show [your_remote] | sed -n '/HEAD branch/s/.*: //p' 

I tested it with multiple repo from gitlab, and it worked fine. (for the most situations [your_remote] will be origin, run git remote to check the name of your remote)

Answer 2

Tested with git 2.9.4 (but possibly works in other versions) in a repo cloned from Github:

$ git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD | sed 's@^refs/remotes/origin/@@' master