Reference Git branch start commit.

Question

Hi

I am trying to find how to reference branch start commit from script. I mean the commit sha at which branch was forked.

Moreover I expect it work for history made from svn repo.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1006775/git-how-to-reference-the-initial-commit/1007545#1007545 just gives first commit of repo creation and not feature branch start commit.

Help :)

Answer 1

What you're looking for is the command merge-base:

git merge-base master feature-branch

will print the best common ancestor of those two branches, i.e. where they forked apart. (The documentation has pretty pretty pictures to clarify some of the interesting cases)