How does Jira know to display a link to a branch in the development area of the issue?

[Elliot Borst]

I thought it was as simple as, if you click create branch from a jira issue, it gets linked and you can see the branch and commits to that branch on the issue.

Im sure that is working however im starting to notice that other issues will seemingly display branches that have nothing to do with them.

As example is an issue my developer was about to start working on today, is number issue KEY-37 (KEY is instead of the real project key)

Other than creating the issue, it hasn't been touched, but when i look at it, it has 2 branches already linked to it, and they are the same branch for issue KEY-39?

If i go an look at issue KEY-39 it has 3 branches! 2 of them i created myself and they had nothing to do with KEY-39, I created them off two other seperate jira issues.

Whats the logic How is this happening?

[Andy Heinzer]

Jira will display any commit/branch/pullrequest/review that mentions the specific issue key (in repos that Jira is aware of via the application link or DVCS connector).    While Jira does have an option to create a new branch, the development panel in Jira will show any commit/branch/pullrequest/review that has contains that specific Jira issue key in the comments.  So it doesn't always reflect a one way exchange of data here.  It's possible that some other user in a repo Jira is connected to used a specific Issue key in their comments and that action will cause Jira to link to that branch.

This is also explained in Referencing issues in your development work