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gx parent prints the parent branch of the current branch and exits. It is designed for use in shell scripts and pipelines — it outputs only the branch name with no decoration.

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Usage

gx parent

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Behavior

  • If the current branch is in the stack, prints the stack parent
  • If the current branch is not in the stack, prints the HEAD branch (main/master)
  • If you are on trunk, exits with code 1 (no output)
  • If not in a git repo, exits with code 1 (no output)

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Examples

$ gx parent
feature/auth

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Composability

gx parent is designed for shell pipelines and scripting: 
$ git diff $(gx parent)...HEAD
gx parent uses exit codes for scripting: exit 0 means a parent was found and printed, exit 1 means no parent (on trunk, detached HEAD, or not in a repo). It never prints error messages to stdout.
  • Output is a single line with just the branch name, no color codes or prefix
  • When the branch is in the stack config, the recorded parent is used
  • When the branch is not in the stack, the HEAD branch is returned as a sensible default
  • On trunk, there is no parent, so the command exits with code 1 and no output