git-switch-regex

⚠️ This script is written for macOS.

This script switches branches using regex matching. When more than one match is found, it prompts a choice menu so you can pick the desired branch. If the regex filter is omitted, it prompts the most recently switched branches. These are retreived from the repository's .git/recent-branches file, which is populated by a post-checkout hook.

Switching with regex

Partial branch name:

> git switch-regex devel

Switched to branch 'develop'
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/develop'.

With metacharacters:

> git switch-regex ^ma[r-t].*r$

Switched to branch 'master'
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.

Multiple matches:

> git switch-regex feature/coo

[1] feature/coolBeans
[2] feature/cookie

Make your choice:

Remote-only branches are colored red. The script uses the hard-coded 'origin' as the remote name.

Switching to a recent branch

> git switch-regex

[1] master
[2] develop
[3] my_feature

Make your choice:

Copying the branch name

Intead of switching to the matching branch, you can copy it to the clipboard by specifying using the -c flag:

> git switch-regex -c devel

Copied 'develop' to the clipboard

Installing the script

You need to add the script directory to your PATH inside ~/.bashrc for Bash and ~/.zshrc for Z Shell.

> echo 'PATH="~/git-switch-regex:$PATH"' > ~/.bashrc

Setting up the hook

To save recent branches to your repository's .git/recent-branches file, you need to set up a global post-checkout hook. If you don't have a 'hooks' directory yet (check with git config -l | grep core.hookspath), do the following:

> mkdir ~/.githooks && git config --global core.hooksPath ~/.githooks

Now assuming ~/.githooks is your hooks directory, copy the post-checkout file from this repository to ~/.githooks/ or alternatively, you can source it directly with:

echo "source ~/git-switch-regex/post-checkout" >> ~/.githooks/post-checkout