git-nearest

Which remote branch is my current branch closest to?

$ git nearest
@  HEAD -> fix-typo  [1 staged, 1 untracked]
↑2 ↓0  origin/main           574e9395
↑8 ↓0  origin/feature/login  51eef8f5
↑9 ↓1  origin/release/1.2    fc1afa3b

The first line shows where HEAD is and the state of the working tree: [clean], or counts such as [2 staged, 3 modified, 1 untracked] (conflicted files turn it red). That is the thing to check before moving the branch somewhere else.

↑ is how many commits HEAD has that the remote branch doesn't, ↓ is how many the remote branch has that HEAD doesn't, and the last column is the merge-base. The closest branch (fewest ↑, then fewest ↓) comes first. Remote branches with the same tip all show up, so you can see ties instead of having one picked for you.

Graph

git nearest -g draws how HEAD and those branches relate, in the style of jj log: newest on top, and runs of ordinary commits folded into a ~ (n) row on the vertical line.

$ git nearest -g
@  ae22273d  HEAD -> fix-typo  [1 staged, 1 untracked]
~  (1)
○  574e9395  origin/main
├─╮
~ │  (3)
│ ○  51eef8f5  origin/feature/login
│ ~  (2)
│ │ ○  2cf4c0c2  origin/release/1.2
├─┼─╯
○ │  fc1afa3b  merge-base
~ │  (1)
├─╯
○  5a42fea0  merge-base
~ (n) = n commits folded between

Only HEAD, the branch tips and the merge-bases between them are drawn. (3) means three commits sit between the nodes above and below it.

Both examples are real output from a synthetic repository built by scripts/demo.py.

Install

Needs Python 3.8+ and git. No other dependencies.

uv tool install git-nearest      # or: pipx install git-nearest

The package installs an executable called git-nearest; git runs any git-<name> on your PATH as git <name>.

Usage

git nearest [N] [-g] [--no-status] [--color {auto,always,never}] [--no-color]

How it works

git has no notion of a branch's "parent", only of common ancestors, so this is a heuristic, not a lookup. For every ref under refs/remotes it asks git for the ahead/behind counts against HEAD in a single for-each-ref --format='%(ahead-behind:HEAD)' call (git 2.41+; older versions fall back to one rev-list per ref, which is slower on repositories with many branches).

The graph walks the history above the common base once, marks which tips can reach each commit, and keeps only the commits where those sets change. Those are the merge-bases.

Limitations

• "Nearest" is by commit count. If you branched from main last week and release/1.0 happens to be two commits behind main, release/1.0 is nearer. Look at the graph when it matters.
• Branches that are not in refs/remotes are ignored. Run git fetch first.
• Folded counts on a node with two parents are the commits unique to that node, shown once.

Similar tools

• Scripts based on git show-branch or on grepping git log --decorate for origin/ (the usual Stack Overflow answers) look only at the first decorated ancestor, so they miss ties and give no distance.
• Git Town records a parent for each branch when it creates the branch. That is exact but only works for branches it knows about; git-nearest infers from history and needs no setup.

Development

uv run pytest

License

MIT