How can I search Git branches for a file or directory?

git log + git branch will find it for you:

% git log --all -- somefile

commit 55d2069a092e07c56a6b4d321509ba7620664c63
Author: Dustin Sallings <dustin@spy.net>
Date:   Tue Dec 16 14:16:22 2008 -0800

    added somefile


% git branch -a --contains 55d2069
  otherbranch

Supports globbing, too:

% git log --all -- '**/my_file.png'

The single quotes are necessary (at least if using the Bash shell) so the shell passes the glob pattern to git unchanged, instead of expanding it (just like with Unix find).

• 4
  This works if you know the exact path to somefile: if you need regex search over the path/filename, for example, then you can use ididak's answer.

  – ShreevatsaR

  Feb 27, 2012 at 9:05
• 84
  Supports globbing, too: git log --all -- **/my_file.png

  – webmat

  Apr 25, 2012 at 18:01
• 5
  I used this for a slightly different problem. I was trying to find all the *.sql files I had committed to a particular branch. So I used git log --grep='branch' --author='me' -- *.sql. Worked like a charm. git version 1.7.11.1

  – PREEB

  Sep 17, 2012 at 22:57
• 1
  Note that gitk supports the globbing as well. That is an excellent answer @webmat! If you want to see where it's been deleted / created /etc, you can use git log --all --stat -- **/my_file.png, that way you won't have to guess if you're checking it out from a commit that deleted it.

  – eacousineau

  Oct 4, 2013 at 4:55
• 1
  @webmat: I took the liberty of adding your information about globbing to the answer. Thanks for mentioning it!

  – sleske

  Dec 9, 2014 at 9:51

git ls-tree might help. To search across all existing branches:

for branch in `git for-each-ref --format="%(refname)" refs/heads`; do
  echo $branch :; git ls-tree -r --name-only $branch | grep '<foo>'
done

The advantage of this is that you can also search with regular expressions for the file name.

• 3
  A few hopefully helpful comments: (a) You probably want to add "-r" to "git ls-tree" so that it'll find the file even if it's in a subdirectory. (b) A perhaps neater alternative to the first line would be to use "git for-each ref", e.g. "for branch in git for-each-ref --format="%(refname)" refs/heads; do" (c) "git ls-tree --name-only" will make the output tidier (d) it might be worth pointing out in your answer that there's an advantage of this over Dustin's solution, namely that you don't need to exactly know the filename - you can search by regular expression matching any part of the path

  – Mark Longair

  Jun 28, 2010 at 16:02
• 12
  I wrapped this up in a script so you can run "gitfind.sh <regex>"; the gist is gist.github.com/62d981890eccb48a99dc

  – Handyman5

  Sep 19, 2011 at 17:12
• 6
  Note that this will only search across local branches. To search remote-tracking branches, use refs/remotes instead of refs/heads. To search everything (local branches, remote-tracking branches and tags), just use refs/.

  – sleske

  Apr 23, 2013 at 7:43

Although ididak's response is pretty cool, and Handyman5 provides a script to use it, I found it a little restricted to use that approach.

Sometimes you need to search for something that can appear/disappear over time, so why not search against all commits? Besides that, sometimes you need a verbose response, and other times only commit matches. Here are two versions of those options. Put these scripts on your path:

git-find-file

for branch in $(git rev-list --all)
do
  if (git ls-tree -r --name-only $branch | grep --quiet "$1")
  then
     echo $branch
  fi
done

git-find-file-verbose

for branch in $(git rev-list --all)
do
  git ls-tree -r --name-only $branch | grep "$1" | sed 's/^/'$branch': /'
done

Now you can do

$ git find-file <regex>
sha1
sha2

$ git find-file-verbose <regex>
sha1: path/to/<regex>/searched
sha1: path/to/another/<regex>/in/same/sha
sha2: path/to/other/<regex>/in/other/sha

See that using getopt you can modify that script to alternate searching all commits, refs, refs/heads, been verbose, etc.

$ git find-file <regex>
$ git find-file --verbose <regex>
$ git find-file --verbose --decorated --color <regex>

Checkout https://github.com/albfan/git-find-file for a possible implementation.

• Did you mean "Now you can do git-find-file <regex>"? I got it working, thank you!

  – Elijah Lynn

  Apr 1, 2014 at 20:41
• 2
  I personally find it much more useful to use $(git branch | cut -c 3-) instead of $(git rev-list --all). I don't care about finding a bunch of commits, I care about named branches.

  – Campadrenalin

  Jul 14, 2014 at 20:15
• I also changed the scripts to use $(git branch | cut -c 3-) since the loop over all commits was much too slow.

  – i4h

  Oct 26, 2015 at 10:39
• Seen all the fuss I thing is worth to create a repo for this. github.com/albfan/git-find-file. I have open some issues, feel free to propose more or send PR for it.

  – albfan

  Oct 28, 2015 at 12:09
• 1
  @lumbric installing script on path works out of the box, its a git feature

  – albfan

  May 13, 2016 at 14:09

Command Line

You could use gitk --all and search for commits "touching paths" and the pathname you are interested in.

UI

(Credit to: @MikeW's suggestion.)

• 3
  As stated, use gitk --all, then in View | New view, enable All Branches. Then set your search criteria: filenames (with wild cards) in the penultimate field. Finally: OK.

  – MikeW

  Jan 21, 2016 at 15:20

Copy & paste this to use git find-file SEARCHPATTERN

Printing all searched branches:

git config --global alias.find-file '!for branch in `git for-each-ref --format="%(refname)" refs/heads`; do echo "${branch}:"; git ls-tree -r --name-only $branch | nl -bn -w3 | grep "$1"; done; :'

Print only branches with results:

git config --global alias.find-file '!for branch in $(git for-each-ref --format="%(refname)" refs/heads); do if git ls-tree -r --name-only $branch | grep "$1" > /dev/null; then  echo "${branch}:"; git ls-tree -r --name-only $branch | nl -bn -w3 | grep "$1"; fi; done; :'

These commands will add some minimal shell scripts directly to your ~/.gitconfig as global git alias.

• it is only searching in master branch

  – Nasif Imtiaz Ohi

  Mar 20, 2019 at 17:30
• It search in all local branches

  – Leonardo Herrera

  Jun 12, 2020 at 17:39
• 2
  How do I get it to search all local and remote branches?

  – rgvcorley

  Jun 29, 2020 at 5:52
• " How do I get it to search all local and remote branches?" First pull all the remote branches with: git branch -r | grep -v '->' | while read remote; do git branch --track "${remote#origin/}" "$remote"; done git fetch --all git pull --all

  – Rob Tow

  Mar 16 at 17:19

This command finds commits which introduced specified paths:

git log --source --all --diff-filter=A --name-only -- '**/my_file.png'

A quite decent implementation of the find command for Git repositories can be found here:

https://github.com/mirabilos/git-find