SourceTree: What do colors of Branches and Tags mean?

Johannes Kilian
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June 11, 2013

Do the color of branches and tags within log-view do have any special meaning?

Example

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KieranA
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June 11, 2013

Hi Johannes,

They have no meaning at all, they're only there so you can easily distinguish between different branches and tags.

The colours change when you change branch because a branch doesn't hold any state by which we determine a colour, we just calculate unique colours when the view initially loads.

Hope that helps

Johannes Kilian
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June 12, 2013

That's something I assumed. In my eyes I might be useful to use some more colors than four only - looking on the example above it might be assumed at a first look, that the yellow ones are related to each other (green also). The red ones ARE actually related as they all refer to the same branch ....

Like Alves Christo likes this
7 votes
Vladimir Bjelakovic November 11, 2014

At least i would expect that develop branch is in whole tree shown with same color. Sometimes it is not. It is really confusing when one branch is in one specific timeline span blue then few commits after pink (and some other branch take blue color)..

Johannes Kilian
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November 11, 2014

This is mainly an issue of git and how it handles branches. Have a look at my (answer here)[https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/310287/how-to-know-which-branch-color-correlates-with-which-branch]. *develop* is not a special branch for git in any way - it's a normal branch like each other branch. So why should it be treated specially by git when rendering trees,created via git-log?. Branch *develop* gets it's special meaning by the branching model you use (for example gitflow ...). What you are asking for is a graph rendering depending on the applied branching model. As the branching model could not be enforced in any way (it's only a recomendation) via the used tools (git/sourcetree) it does not make sense (in my eyes) to render the graph using assumptions from a branching model which is not sure/enforced to be used ...

goofyfooter February 6, 2015

It would be a nice option to allow the user to select "git flow" colors be used to color branches according to the "git flow" model, i.e. Master=blue, hotfix=orange, release=green, develop=yellow, feature=pink.

Like Andrew Leckie likes this
Nicholas Nicholas March 4, 2016

I agree with Lewis.

Like Andrew Leckie likes this
Alexander Batyrshin March 28, 2016

+1
or give ability to select colors 

Like Andrew Leckie likes this
Victor van der Wolf May 26, 2016

Yes, please allow for selecting colors.

If this is too much trouble, at least show a legend explaining what color belongs what branch.

Like # people like this
Southerlies July 15, 2016

+1

Agree with Lewis

Like Andrew Leckie likes this
Deleted user November 6, 2016

+1

Rodrigo da Silva February 10, 2017

+1

Waldemar Holzwarth February 14, 2017

+1

jorisvanleeuwen February 17, 2017

+1

Brandon Snider March 6, 2017

Also a +1 to Lewis, although I'd prefer to just be able to specify colors for my branches independently.

For example, allow us to tell source tree:

"Any branch called 'MyRandomBranchName' should be rendered as blue"

and

"Any branch called 'feature' should be rendered as a green line"

I would imagine that this could be done by changing only the GUI logic of the program. It would be a very nifty feature.

Ted Czotter June 28, 2017

+1 please make branch colors in some way consistent. I'll take git flow or manual.

Our team has grown and now my tree is so full of changing colors (and position as well!) that I now have lower comprehension of the situation. 

Like Andrew Leckie likes this
mystride admin November 4, 2017

images.jpeg

The color graph is useless right now.  Being able to map specific colors to specific branch names would be a godsend!  

 

Considering this has been an obvious pain point since 2013, I won't hold my breath. 

Like Andrew Leckie likes this
erikthebuzz February 25, 2019

Adding a +1 here!  Even a best-effort color preference would be super useful.. and a legend on the commits view seems like it would be easy to do and very useful.

Bon Crowder March 21, 2019

I haven't even discovered the need for colors and want to pick my own. Please, sweet Atlassians - make this so!

xoxo

~Bon

Andrew Leckie August 28, 2019

+1

linamejia October 23, 2019

+1

Rokas Gustys June 5, 2020

+1, wtf Atlassian it's 2020 please fix!!!

0 votes
ips-vlad August 7, 2019

+1

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