What do the branch colors in log view mean?

[Sean Wallace]

I see that branches have various colors. It seems to me that there is some pattern, but I can't figure out what it is!

Am I just going a little crazy, or is there really something going on there?

[stevestreeting · Accepted solution]

The colours themselves just match the graph colours so you can more easily match them up - other than that they don't mean anything except to be distinct from each other.

The icons on the branches do indicate more infomation - blue arrows meaning local, grey arrows meaning remote. The currently checked out local branch has a 'check mark' badge on it too.

[Sean Wallace]

Thanks for the quick reply! I guess I just got some strange combination at first that tricked me into thinking there was a pattern.

[JDFagan]

I'm currently using version 1.5.7.1

When in log view, I noticed when I update to a different branch (which is a light red color) and then when I later then commit to this recently changed to branch, the colors then change to light blue. So is the pattern of light blue indication that its my currently working branch which I've recently committed to (vs. light red is other branch which I've yet to commit to)? That is only confusion I'm seeing with regards to colors changing after switching to a branch (which confused me a bit when I noticed this).

So..my only slight critique here would be that you don't change colors after the commit. Or simply do the change of colors at time of switch/update? Or what was the reasoning for when the colors change post switching (as I described above)?

[stevestreeting]

Did you have uncomitted changes? The colours are always the same sequence, but if you have uncommitted changes then whatever branch you are on will come first in the stack, because it will be the first 'blob' to be drawn (and connected with the branch going backwards).

I did try programmatically generating colours from branch names so they stayed the same regardless of the layout before, but this ended up causing too many accidental similarities. The sequence we have guarantees that they're easy to tell apart, but if the sequence of branches changes because of things like this then yes, the branch colours will change.