Magit status section with recent checkouts / visited branches?

Question

In the same fashion magit can offer the list of recent commits in a section of status buffer. I'd like to have a list of recent checkout/visited branches to be able to quickly switch to it (M-xbb).

One of current patterns I have is :

• work on my topic branch
• find a bug unrelated to my topic
• switch to master and pull latest
• create a spinoff branch from master (checkout -b )
• fix bug
• push & pull-request
• go back to my topic branch

For last step I have to remember the name of my branch ; which is not handy for me.

Answer 1

I experimented with this feature after digging through magit source code.

TO ENABLE it, as @tarsius, magit maintainer, points out in the comment below, use the function magit-add-section-hook.

add exp-feat/magit-insert-recent-branches to magit-status-sections-hook (preferably using customize interface since you would like to decide this section location in your magit-status buffer).

Here it goes (copied lots of stuffs from magit source code 😹):

(defvar exp-feat/recent-branches (make-hash-table :test 'equal))

(defcustom exp-feat/recent-branches-limits 3
  "Limits" :type 'integer :risky t)

(defun exp-feat/magit-insert-recent-branches nil
  "Insert recent branches"
  (let* ((dir (magit-toplevel))
         (curr-branch (magit-get-current-branch))
         (prev-branch (magit-get-previous-branch))
         (rbs (--> (gethash dir exp-feat/recent-branches)
                   (nconc (list prev-branch curr-branch) it)
                   (-distinct it)
                   (-filter (lambda (a) (and a (not (equal a curr-branch)))) it))))
    (when rbs
      (when (> (length rbs) exp-feat/recent-branches-limits)
        (--> (1- exp-feat/recent-branches-limits)
             (nthcdr it rbs)
             (setcdr it nil)))
      (puthash dir rbs exp-feat/recent-branches)
      (magit-insert-section (rb "rb")
        (magit-insert-heading "Recent branches")
        (dolist (it-branch rbs)
          (let ((output (magit-rev-format "%h %s" it-branch)))
            (string-match "^\\([^ ]+\\) \\(.*\\)" output)
            (magit-bind-match-strings (commit summary) output
              (when (and t (equal summary ""))
                (setq summary "(no commit message)"))
              (magit-insert-section (branch it-branch)
                (insert (propertize commit
                                    'font-lock-face 'magit-hash) ?\s)
                (insert (propertize it-branch
                                    'font-lock-face 'magit-branch-local) ?\s)
                (insert (funcall magit-log-format-message-function
                                 it-branch summary) ?\n)))))))))