使用git rev-list打印分支名称

Question

I'm writing a script and I need to feed it with a paging list of branches in a repo.

The only git command I could find that can handle refs with a --max-count and a --skip parameter, which are the essential components of paging results, is a rev-list . But I can't find an equivalent to the refname for the --format argument of rev-list .

This is what I'm trying to do but with a git for-each-ref instead:

git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate refs/heads/ \
       --format='%(refname:short) %(objectname:short)'

Unfortunately neither git for-each-ref nor git branch have a --skip for paging (only a --count ), so it's no good for my paging script.

I'm also trying to do this using one command. Using nested/piped commands has a performance hit I'm not willing to take due to the fact that this will run against a long list of historical branches and needs to process by a pages. But I'm open to suggestions.

Answer 1

Every ref points to one and only one commit, which is why for-each-ref can be made to act on commit attributes.

But the converse is not true. Some commits have no refs pointing at them. Some commits have many refs pointing at them. So asking rev-list to act on ref (eg branch) attributes is inherently ambiguous.

I think your best bet is to run for-each-ref once, capturing the output to a set of pre-paged files. Yes the initial run to create the files will involve piped processes ( git for-each-ref piped to a script that splits out a file for each page); but then requests for individual pages will actually be faster because they won't even have to invoke git.