git - How to check if remote branch exists on a given remote repository?

Question

I need to do a subtree merge for a specific branch, if it exists on a given remote repository. The problem is that the remote repository is not checked out locally, so I can't use git branch -r. All I have is a remote address, something like this https://github.com/project-name/project-name.git. Is there a way to list remote branches just by a remote address? I couldn't find anything usefull :(

Answer 1

$ git ls-remote --heads git@github.com:user/repo.git branch-name

In case branch-name is found you will get the following output:

b523c9000c4df1afbd8371324083fef218669108        refs/heads/branch-name

Otherwise no output will be sent.

So piping it to wc will give you 1 or 0:

$ git ls-remote --heads git@github.com:user/repo.git branch-name | wc -l

Alternatively you can set --exit-code flag on git ls-remote which will return exit code 2 in case no matching refs are found. The result can be checked directly in a shell test or by checking the status variable $?.

$ git ls-remote --exit-code --heads git@github.com:user/repo.git branch-name