Check if local git repo is ahead/behind remote

Vittorio Romeo Published at Dev

Vittorio Romeo

I'm developing a git plug-in, and I need to know when a local repo is changed (can commit changes), ahead (can push to remote) or behind (can pull from remote) using the command line.

This is what I am doing so far:

Can commit?

If git diff-index --name-only --ignore-submodules HEAD -- returns something, then yes, there are changes to commit.
Can push?

If git status -sb contains the word ahead in it's output, then yes, there are commits to push.
Can pull?

Nothing implemented yet.

The can commit? part seems to work properly. Can push? only works for the master branch, and this is a huge problem.

How can I safely check if, on every branch, a git repo has changes to commit, commits to push, or needs a git pull?

Vittorio Romeo

In the end, I implemented this in my C++11 git-ws plugin.

string currentBranch = run("git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD"); 
bool canCommit = run("git diff-index --name-only --ignore-submodules HEAD --").empty();
bool canPush = stoi(run("git rev-list HEAD...origin/" + currentBranch + " --ignore-submodules --count")[0]) > 0;

Seems to work so far. canPull still needs to be tested and implemented.

Explanation:

currentBranch gets the console output, which is a string of the current branch name
canCommit gets whether the console outputs something (difference between current changes and HEAD, ignoring submodules)
canPush gets the count of changes between origin/currentBranch and the local repo - if > 0, the local repo can be pushed

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