Find Branches with Changes

Shell script to find the Git branches that contain changes to a particular file which have not yet been merged back into a specific branch. Helper scripts are included for using this from a SourceTree custom action.

SourceTree custom action

Setup (on Windows)

To use this as a custom action in SourceTree on a Windows PC, do the following:

1. Clone/copy this repo to somewhere on your computer.
2. Open SourceTree.
3. Click Tools > Options.
4. Select the "Custom Actions" tab at the top of the dialog that opened.
5. Click "Add".
6. In the "Menu caption" field, put something like "Find changes not yet merged to local develop".
7. Turn on the "Show Full Output" option.
8. Click the ... browse button beside the "Script to run" field, select the find-branches_sourcetree-custom-action.bat file wherever you saved it to on your computer, and click "Open".
9. In the "Parameters" field, put the following:
   develop refs/ $REPO $FILE
   (For more information about these parameters, see below).
10. Click "OK".
11. Click "OK" to close the "Options" dialog.
12. Close SourceTree (to finish updating the list of Custom Actions shown for right-click actions).

Basic Usage (on Windows)

To view the list of branches with contain commits where a specific file is changed (and which have not yet been merged back into develop)...

1. Open SourceTree.
2. When viewing the history of a repo, select the File Status tab near the bottom-middle of the SourceTree window.
3. In the search field near the top-right corner, type part or all of the name of the file whose unmerged changes you want to see.
4. Right-click on the file, select Custom Actions > Find unmerged changes to file.

After some text from Git, it should show the names of any branches where that file has changed.

For example:

find-branches_sourcetree-custom-action.bat C:\Projects\find-branches-with-changes README.md
Welcome to Git (version 1.9.5-preview20141217)


Run 'git help git' to display the help index.
Run 'git help <command>' to display help for specific commands.





Branches where "README.md" has been changed (if any):

-----

feature/initial-working-version

-----
Done.


Completed successfully.

Parameters for SourceTree Custom Action

The parameters provided to the SourceTree custom action dialog follow this pattern:

1. The branch that the changes have NOT yet been merged back into.
2. The pattern to use for getting the list of branches. This value is passed to the git for-each-ref command.
   • To only list remote branches, use refs/remotes/origin/.
   • To list all branches, use refs/.
3. The string $REPO, which SourceTree will replace with the root folder of the repository.
4. The string $FILE, which SourceTree will replace with the list of selected files (ideally only one).

Notes

• When you are done searching for a file, make sure you did not leave anything typed into the search field. Otherwise, you may waste some time being confused why you do not see the expected files in the staged/unstaged areas when doing a commit.
• Selecting multiple files at a time will currently only return results for whichever file SourceTree passed to the script first, so it is best to do this one-at-a-time at the moment.