switch branch in git by partial name

Question

If I have the following branches in git

1194-qa-server
master
remotes/origin/1178-authentication
remotes/origin/1194-qa-server
remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
remotes/origin/master

I want to switch to a branch using --just-- the number, even if that requires calling a script For example:

switch_branch 1178

and the script/solution should do the following

1. git branch -a (find all branches local and remote in my repository)
2. filter by the given parameter ('1178' above)
3. extract the name of the branch that git can use
4. switch to that branch

What is the recommended way to do it without having to perform all these steps manually?

I am using Mac OSX, if that matters here.

update -- bash-it (github.com/revans/bash-it) serves my purpose

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Answer 1

There are very few occasions where you'd want to checkout remotes/origin/*. They exist but for the purposes of this shortcut, let's not worry about them. This will get you what you want on OSX:

git config --global alias.sco '!sh -c "git branch -a | grep -v remotes | grep $1 | xargs git checkout"'

You can then issue git sco <number> to checkout a branch that includes <number> but excludes "remotes". You can change sco to be anything you'd like. I just picked it for "super checkout".

Of course this won't work terribly well if you've got more than one branch that matches <number>. It should, however, be a decent starting point.

Answer 2

Here's the solution I came up with for myself.

[ ${#} -ne 1 ] && { echo -e "Please provide one search string" ; exit 1 ; }
MATCHES=( $(git branch -a --color=never | sed -r 's|^[* ] (remotes/origin/)?||' | sort -u | grep -E "^((feature|bugfix|release|hotfix)/)?([A-Z]+-[1-9][0-9]*-)?${1}") )
case ${#MATCHES[@]} in
  ( 0 ) echo "No branches matched '${1}'" ; exit 1  ;;
  ( 1 ) git checkout "${MATCHES[0]}"      ; exit $? ;;
esac
echo "Ambiguous search '${1}'; returned ${#MATCHES[@]} matches:"

for ITEM in "${MATCHES[@]}" ; do
  echo -e "  ${ITEM}"
done
exit 1

I called it git-rcheckout ("r" for regex, for want of a better name) and placed it in my path (it's a little too long to shoehorn into my .gitconfig.)

It will attempt to match against local and remote branches (though only checks out locals), and will tolerate (IE disregard for the purposes of searching) some JIRA stylings, such as branches starting with common prefixes and things styled like JIRA ticket IDs.

e.g. Typing this:

git rcheckout this

Should match things like

this-branch
feature/this-branch
bugfix/JIRA-123-this-branch
JIRA-123-this-branch
remotes/origin/this-branch
remotes/origin/feature/this-branch
remotes/origin/bugfix/JIRA-123-this-branch
remotes/origin/JIRA-123-this-branch

But the regexes I've used are sufficiently tolerant that you could also do:

git rcheckout JIRA-123

To access:

bugfix/JIRA-123-this-branch
JIRA-123-this-branch
remotes/origin/bugfix/JIRA-123-this-branch
remotes/origin/JIRA-123-this-branch

It defaults to searching for branch prefixes, but actually you can use regexes to do fancier things if desired, like so:

git rcheckout '.*bran'
git rcheckout '.*is-br.*h'

Answer 3

Here is my solution with fuzzy checkout: Add the alias to your ~/.gitconfig by run

git config --global alias.fc '!f() { git branch -a | grep -m1 -e ${1}.*${2} | sed "s/remotes\/origin\///" | xargs git checkout; }; f'

The command above will add the alias to your ~/.gitconfig:

[alias]
    # fuzzy checkout branch, e.g: git cb feature 739, will checkout branch feature/PGIA-739-deploy-maximum
    fc = "!f() { git branch -a | grep -m1 -e ${1}.*${2} | sed \"s/remotes\\/origin\\///\" | xargs git checkout; }; f" 

The alias can have 2 parameters for the fuzzy matching, you can use it like:

git fc <keyword1> <keyword2>

It will find the checkout the branch first match

For example, if you want to checkout your branch 1178, you can run:

git fc 1178

the alias fc supports two parameters, if you want more accurate matching, you also can run:

git fc 1178 auth

You also can find my other favorite snippets here