Find out which remote branch a local branch is tracking

See also:
How can I see which Git branches are tracking which remote / upstream branch?

How can I find out which remote branch a local branch is tracking?

Do I need to parse git config output, or is there a command that would do this for me?

Here is a command that gives you all tracking branches (configured for 'pull'), see:

$ git branch -vv
  main   aaf02f0 [main/master: ahead 25] Some other commit
* master add0a03 [jdsumsion/master] Some commit

You have to wade through the SHA and any long-wrapping commit messages, but it's quick to type and I get the tracking branches aligned vertically in the 3rd column.

If you need info on both 'pull' and 'push' configuration per branch, see the other answer on git remote show origin.

Update

Starting in git version 1.8.5 you can show the upstream branch with git status and git status -sb

Two choices:

% git rev-parse --abbrev-ref --symbolic-full-name @{u}
origin/mainline

% git for-each-ref --format='%(upstream:short)' "$(git symbolic-ref -q HEAD)"
origin/mainline

I think git branch -av only tells you what branches you have and which commit they're at, leaving you to infer which remote branches the local branches are tracking.

git remote show origin explicitly tells you which branches are tracking which remote branches. Here's example output from a repository with a single commit and a remote branch called abranch:

$ git branch -av
* abranch                d875bf4 initial commit
  master                 d875bf4 initial commit
  remotes/origin/HEAD    -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/abranch d875bf4 initial commit
  remotes/origin/master  d875bf4 initial commit

versus

$ git remote show origin
* remote origin
  Fetch URL: /home/ageorge/tmp/d/../exrepo/
  Push  URL: /home/ageorge/tmp/d/../exrepo/
  HEAD branch (remote HEAD is ambiguous, may be one of the following):
    abranch
    master
  Remote branches:
    abranch tracked
    master  tracked
  Local branches configured for 'git pull':
    abranch merges with remote abranch
    master  merges with remote master
  Local refs configured for 'git push':
    abranch pushes to abranch (up to date)
    master  pushes to master  (up to date)

Update: Well, it's been several years since I posted this! For my specific purpose of comparing HEAD to upstream, I now use @{u}, which is a shortcut that refers to the HEAD of the upstream tracking branch. (See https://git-scm.com/docs/gitrevisions#gitrevisions-emltbranchnamegtupstreamemegemmasterupstreamememuem ).

Original answer: I've run across this problem as well. I often use multiple remotes in a single repository, and it's easy to forget which one your current branch is tracking against. And sometimes it's handy to know that, such as when you want to look at your local commits via git log remotename/branchname..HEAD.

All this stuff is stored in git config variables, but you don't have to parse the git config output. If you invoke git config followed by the name of a variable, it will just print the value of that variable, no parsing required. With that in mind, here are some commands to get info about your current branch's tracking setup:

LOCAL_BRANCH=`git name-rev --name-only HEAD`
TRACKING_BRANCH=`git config branch.$LOCAL_BRANCH.merge`
TRACKING_REMOTE=`git config branch.$LOCAL_BRANCH.remote`
REMOTE_URL=`git config remote.$TRACKING_REMOTE.url`

In my case, since I'm only interested in finding out the name of my current remote, I do this:

git config branch.`git name-rev --name-only HEAD`.remote

Find out which remote branch a local branch is tracking

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