Visualizing branch topology in Git

Question

I'm playing with Git in isolation on my own machine, and I find it difficult to maintain a mental model of all my branches and commits. I know I can do a git log to see the commit history from where I am, but is there a way to see the entire branch topography, something like these ASCII maps that seem to be used everywhere for explaining branches?

      .-A---M---N---O---P      /     /   /   /   /     I     B   C   D   E      \   /   /   /   /       `-------------' 

It just feels like someone coming along and trying to pick up my repository would have difficulty working out exactly what was going on.

I guess I'm influenced by AccuRev's stream browser...

Answer 1

Use git log --graph or gitk. (Both also accept --all, which will show all the branches instead of just the current one.)

For branch names and a compact view, try:

git log --graph --decorate --oneline 

Answer 2

I have 3 aliases (and 4 alias-aliases for quick usage) that I normally throw in my ~/.gitconfig file:

[alias]     lg = lg1     lg1 = lg1-specific --all     lg2 = lg2-specific --all     lg3 = lg3-specific --all      lg1-specific = log --graph --abbrev-commit --decorate --format=format:'%C(bold blue)%h%C(reset) - %C(bold green)(%ar)%C(reset) %C(white)%s%C(reset) %C(dim white)- %an%C(reset)%C(auto)%d%C(reset)'     lg2-specific = log --graph --abbrev-commit --decorate --format=format:'%C(bold blue)%h%C(reset) - %C(bold cyan)%aD%C(reset) %C(bold green)(%ar)%C(reset)%C(auto)%d%C(reset)%n''          %C(white)%s%C(reset) %C(dim white)- %an%C(reset)'     lg3-specific = log --graph --abbrev-commit --decorate --format=format:'%C(bold blue)%h%C(reset) - %C(bold cyan)%aD%C(reset) %C(bold green)(%ar)%C(reset) %C(bold cyan)(committed: %cD)%C(reset) %C(auto)%d%C(reset)%n''          %C(white)%s%C(reset)%n''          %C(dim white)- %an <%ae> %C(reset) %C(dim white)(committer: %cn <%ce>)%C(reset)' 

git lg/git lg1 looks like this:

git lg2 looks like this:

and git lg3 looks like this:

It should be noted that this isn't meant as a end-all-be-all solution— it's a template for you to change, add to and fix up to your liking. If you want to use these, my recommendation is to:

1. Add them to your .gitconfig,
2. Customize to your liking (different color choices, different line arrangements for the 2- and 3-line versions, etc.),
3. And then save a copy to a Gist or other code snippet tool so you can copy & paste it into .gitconfigs in the future (or alternatively version control your dotfiles, of course).

_{Note: Answer copied from and improved upon the answer at stackoverflow.com/questions/1057564/pretty-git-branch-graphs since it's far more appropriate here than it was there.  Left the copy on the other question for historical reasons— it's closed now, and the answer's referenced by a bunch of other answers.}