move to and fro between git branches via terminal

 The benefit engineers can get from the Unix (-like) OS is you can exploit its bash commands and automate tedious and complicated operations.

The vim /emacs user customize their editor and extend it so as to make those operations pretty quicker, and today I would like to introduce you how to navigate to/fro between git branches of your repository.

On IDE, or any other GUI based systems probably you can navigate objects with right arrow key / left arrow key or mouses, but command line user, it is nasty shit.

#!/usr/bin/env bash#
# git walk
#
brs=`git branch`
cur=`git branch --show-current`
np=0
cache=''option=$1if [[ $option != '-p' && $option != '-n' ]]; then
    cat << EOFgw -p ... go to previous branch
gw -n ... go to next branchEOF
    exit
fii=0
first=''
last=''
for b in $brs; do
    if [[ $b == */* || $b == 'develop' || $b == 'master' ]];then
        if [ $i == 0 ]; then
            first=$b
        fi
        if [ $np == 1 ]; then
            git checkout $b
            exit
        fi
        if [ $cur == $b ]; then
            if [ $option == '-p' ]; then
                if [ $cur != $first ]; then
                    git checkout $cache
                    exit
                else
                    git checkout `git branch | tail -n 1`
                    exit
                fi
            else # next
                np=1
            fi
        fi
        cache=$b
        i=$((i+1))
    fi
doneif [ $option == '-n' ]; then
    git checkout $first
fi

Pretty procedural and you see nested if else clauses but I don’t care. It’s merely a script and seems not the volume of the code increases. You can call this via macro of Vim via vimscript or emacs lisp.

also, since adding `-n -p` is not that fancy job such that you make alias:

echo 'gw -p' >> /usr/local/bin/gwp; chmod +x /usr/local/bin/gwp
echo 'gw -n' >> /usr/local/bin/gwn; chmod +x /usr/local/bin/gwn

This makes you easily swap between your branches in the repository, once it reached the last brach since it’s circular that it is going to be first branch or vice versa.

Yeah, that’s it.