Getting the last commit hash from a remote repo without cloning
$ git ls-remote https://github.com/gturri/dokuJClient.git 2fb540fc8c7e9116791638393370a2fa0f079737 HEAD 2fb540fc8c7e9116791638393370a2fa0f079737 refs/heads/master This command can be run from any directory. If you only want the last sha1, eg to use it in a script, you could then do: git ls-remote https://github.com/gturri/dokuJClient.git HEAD | awk ‘{ print $1}’