Zsh completion with the menu style can do that, git checkout <tab> and you get a browseable list of branch names.

or dmenu

Google says it's an x11 app? I prefer something that works on random ssh connections and is more "inline" to the current command context

Ha what a moron I am. The funniest part is that I was ranting on #python about the need for a tui only version of that.

ps: even funnier, someone just posted a personal project doing just that.

Funnily enough, I recently implemented something akin to percol:

https://github.com/dhamidi/tmenu

It actually tries to be dmenu for the terminal.

Glorious, I was about to start a similar thing (in python though). Time to play with your toy.

ps: I'd add a readline/inputrc alias for '| tmenu '

Would you mind sharing what that alias would look like and do? I can only imagine it appending the string "| tmenu" to the current line, eventually pressing Return for the user as well.

    $ bind '"\C-L": "\| less -S \C-j"'

Warning: seems like GNU readline isn't case sensitive so C-L === C-l thus, in this example, C-l default behavior (clear screen?) is overridden. I didn't RTFM so trust yourself.

Also, a redditor told me about slmenu (dmenu parody for shell)

http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/283ziw/tmenu_dmenu_fo...

Update: the README now describes the available key bindings and gives more usage examples.

> How would you do that in [...] Emacs?

Use Magit, which is probably the best Git client anyway.

Regarding Emacs: git ships with Emacs integration <https://github.com/git/git/tree/master/contrib/emacs>.

Note that most likely git.el is not on your load-path. After it is loaded, you can use M-x git-status to interactively stage, diff and commit files. In the git-status buffer you can checkout a branch with C-c C-o. If helm is installed, you'll get something similar to percol right in Emacs.