Despite my best efforts, I often end up with a lot of branches in my git repositories, many of which need cleaning up, but even so, may which don't. Two git configuration tweaks make the output of git branch much more useful for me.

Motivational example, default git behaviour:

🍊git branch
  2021-apr-cpu-proposed
  OPENJDK-159-openj9-FROM
  OPENJDK-312-passwd
  OPENJDK-407-dnf-modules-fonts
  create_override_files_in_redhat_189
* develop
  inline-container-yaml
  local-modules
  mdrafiur-pr185-jolokia
  openjdk-containers-1.9
  openjdk-rm-jolokia
  osbs-openjdk
  release
  signing-intent-release
  ubi-1.3-mergedown
  ubi-11-singleton-jdk
  ubi8.2
  update-FROM-lines
  update-for-cct-module-changes-maven-etc

The default sort order is alphabetical, but that's never useful for the repositories I work in. The age of the branch is generally more useful. This particular example isn't that long, but often the number of branches can fill the screen. git can be configured to use columns for branch listings, which I think generally improves readability.

🍊git config --global branch.sort authordate
🍊git config --global column.branch auto

After:

🍊git branch
  update-for-cct-module-changes-maven-etc   signing-intent-release
  openjdk-rm-jolokia                        local-modules
  ubi8.2                                    mdrafiur-pr185-jolokia
  ubi-11-singleton-jdk                      OPENJDK-312-passwd
  ubi-1.3-mergedown                         create_override_files_in_redhat_189
  OPENJDK-159-openj9-FROM                   2021-apr-cpu-proposed
  openjdk-containers-1.9                    OPENJDK-407-dnf-modules-fonts
  inline-container-yaml                     release
  update-FROM-lines                       * develop
  osbs-openjdk