parent - Git Productivity Toolkit

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.

Usage

gx parent

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)

Examples

$ gx parent
feature/auth

Composability

gx parent is designed for shell pipelines and scripting:

$ git diff $(gx parent)...HEAD

$ git log --oneline $(gx parent)..HEAD

$ git rebase $(gx parent)

$ git rev-list --count $(gx parent)..HEAD

#!/bin/bash
PARENT=$(gx parent)
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
  echo "Not on a feature branch"
  exit 0
fi
echo "Running checks against $PARENT"
git diff --name-only "$PARENT"...HEAD | xargs lint

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.

Details

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

up / down / top / bottom nuke

​Usage

​Behavior

​Examples

​Composability

Usage

Behavior

Examples

Composability