git merge - Find unmerged Git branches?

Question

I have a Git repository with many branches, some of them already merged and some not. Since the number of branches is quite large, how can I determine which branches have not yet been merged? I would like to avoid having to do an "octopus" merge and re-merging branches that have already been merged.

Answer 1

Try this:

git branch --merged master

It does what it says on the tin (lists branches which have been merged into master). You can also pull up the inverse with:

git branch --no-merged master

If you don't specify master, e.g...

git branch --merged

then it will show you branches which have been merged into the current HEAD (so if you're on master, it's equivalent to the first command; if you're on foo, it's equivalent to git branch --merged foo).

You can also compare upstream branches by specifying the -r flag and a ref to check against, which can be local or remote:

git branch -r --no-merged origin/master