What are the differences between git remote prune git prune git fetch --prune etc

Question

My situation is this    someone working on the same repo has deleted a branch from his local  amp  remote repo     Most people who have asked about this kind of problem on Stack Overflow  or other sites have the issue of branches still showing in their remote tracking branch list git branch -a at the bottom     master   develop   feature blah   remotes origin master   remotes origin develop   remotes origin feature blah   remotes origin random branch I want deleted   However  in MY situation the branch that shouldn t be there  is local     master   develop   feature blah   random branch I want deleted   remotes origin master   remotes origin develop   remotes origin feature blah   When I do any of the following  it doesn t get removed locally     git prune   I also tried     git remote prune origin   git fetch --prune   More useful info   When I check git remote show origin this is how it looks     remote origin Fetch URL  utilities homeconnections ui git Push  URL  utilities homeconnections ui git HEAD branch  master Remote branches   master                        tracked  develop                       tracked  feature blah                  tracked  other123                      tracked  other444                      tracked  other999                      tracked Local branches configured for  git pull    develop                      merges with remote develop  feature blah                 merges with remote other999  master                       merges with remote master  random branch I want deleted merges with remote random branch I want deleted Local refs configured for  git push    develop         pushes to develop      local out of date   master          pushes to master       up to date   feature blah    pushes to feature blah up to date    Notice that it s only in the section titled Local branches configured for  git pull    Why

User · Accepted Answer

I don t blame you for getting frustrated about this   The best way to look at is this   There are potentially three versions of every remote branch    The actual branch on the remote repository   e g   remote repo at https   example com repo git  refs heads master  Your snapshot of that branch locally  stored under refs remotes        e g   local repo  refs remotes origin master  And a local branch that might be tracking the remote branch   e g   local repo  refs heads master    Let s start with git prune   This removes objects that are no longer being referenced  it does not remove references   In your case  you have a local branch   That means there s a ref named random branch I want deleted that refers to some objects that represent the history of that branch   So  by definition  git prune will not remove random branch I want deleted   Really  git prune is a way to delete data that has accumulated in Git but is not being referenced by anything   In general  it doesn t affect your view of any branches   git remote prune origin and git fetch --prune both operate on references under refs remotes      I ll refer to these as remote references    It doesn t affect local branches   The git remote version is useful if you only want to remove remote references under a particular remote   Otherwise  the two do exactly the same thing   So  in short  git remote prune and git fetch --prune operate on number 2 above  For example  if you deleted a branch using the git web GUI and don t want it to show up in your local branch list anymore  git branch -r   then this is the command you should use   To remove a local branch  you should use git branch -d  or -D if it s not merged anywhere    FWIW  there is no git command to automatically remove the local tracking branches if a remote branch disappears

User · Answer

git remote prune and git fetch --prune do the same thing  deleting the refs to the branches that don t exist on the remote  as you said  The second command connects to the remote and fetches its current branches before pruning    However it doesn t touch the local branches you have checked out  that you can simply delete with   git branch -d  random branch I want deleted   Replace -d by -D if the branch is not merged elsewhere   git prune does something different  it purges unreachable objects  those commits that aren t reachable in any branch or tag  and thus not needed anymore

User · Answer

In the event that anyone would be interested  Here s a quick shell script that will remove all local branches that aren t tracked remotely  A word of caution  This will get rid of any branch that isn t tracked remotely regardless of whether it was merged or not   If you guys see any issues with this please let me know and I ll fix it  etc  etc    Save it in a file called git-rm-ntb  call it whatever  on PATH and run   git-rm-ntb  lt remote1 optional gt   lt remote2 optional gt       clean       REMOTES         if   -z   REMOTES     then     REMOTES   git remote     fi   REMOTES   echo   REMOTES    xargs -n1 echo    RBRANCHES      while read REMOTE  do     CURRBRANCHES    git ls-remote  REMOTE   awk   print  2     grep  refs heads     sed  s refs heads           RBRANCHES     CURRBRANCHES         RBRANCHES         done  lt   lt  echo   REMOTES          RBRANCHES       exit   LBRANCHES    git branch   sed  s         awk   print  1       for i in    LBRANCHES       do     skip      for j in    RBRANCHES       do           i     j     amp  amp    skip 1  echo -e   033 32m Keeping  i  033 0m   break        done        -n  skip         echo -e   033 31m   git branch -D  i   033 0m       done    clean

User · Answer

Note that one difference between git remote --prune and git fetch --prune is being fixed  with commit 10a6cc8  by Tom Miller  tmiller   for git 1 9 2 0  Q1 2014       When we have a remote-tracking branch named  frotz nitfol  from a previous fetch  and the upstream now has a branch named    frotz     fetch would fail to remove  frotz nitfol  with a  git fetch --prune  from the upstream    git would inform the user to use  git remote prune  to fix the problem    So  when a upstream repo has a branch   frotz   with the same name as a branch hierarchy   frotz xxx   a possible branch naming convention   git remote --prune was succeeding  in cleaning up the remote tracking branch from your repo   but git fetch --prune was failing     Not anymore      Change the way  fetch --prune  works by moving the pruning operation before the fetching operation    This way  instead of warning the user of a conflict  it automatically fixes it

[git] What are the differences between git remote prune, git prune, git fetch --prune, etc

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