Even better (IMHO!) is `git config branch.sort -committerdate` (note the `-`). This will sort newest committer date first.

FYI/fwiw Fish shell autocompletes branches sorted by last commit date when writing out git commands. It also provides completions for commitish objects grouped by class, giving precedence to the usual targets first, with each group sorted by its own sort key. Handy!

The best upgrade to these kinds of git branch scripts is piping them to fzf. I’ve been using this fbr one from the fzf repo. https://github.com/jbranchaud/dotfiles/blob/main/zshrc.local...

Huge fan of `git recent` [0] for this purpose.

[0] - https://github.com/paulirish/git-recent

I have been using something like this for 10+ years by this point - still wonder why it is not default or easier to do than a custom gitconfig/alias hack. :P

nice. I made myself pretty much the same command couple years ago but called it 'latestbranches'.

Our team's `git branch` output is a graveyard. Sorting by last commit would be a godsend for quickly identifying active work and stale branches.

TIL Git can do this without a shell script. I’ve been manually sorting through branches like an idiot

Such a small quality of life improvement. My `git branch` output is a graveyard sometimes, this would be handy.

Sorting alphabetically never made sense and basically represents not trying to do something useful with the ordering of branches.

Nice. Will help solve some mysteries on older projects.

I love this little fzf bash function that I wrote a few years ago: https://gist.github.com/thomasaarholt/141df779f3f16b641701b4...

It opens a fuzzy finder window showing the branches you have in the repo, sorted by recency. Also shows the latest committer and the date. Hit enter on the one you want to swap to it.

How many branches would you need to have to make this worthwhile?

yep, i have a little helper in my zshrc for this sort of thing:

alias git-hot-refs="git branch --sort=committerdate | tail"

Let's sort git branches by quality, better branches towards the top, slop at the bottom.

Or just have `jj log` custom-configured.

Another useful one if you have a large number of tags and want to see the most recently created ones first:

    git config --global tag.sort -creatordate

I just click on tower and open it, much better

Feels like the type of problem you could simply choose to not have in the first place (by not using git).

Amazing what one can learn from rtfm