Automatic prune with Git fetch or pull

Question

If someone deleted a remote branch because the work is over and I don t know  I won t do a git fetch --prune and eventually I will push back the deleted branch   Is there a viable solution for forcing Git to use the prune mode when fetching   pulling without having to specify it every time

User · Answer

git config --global fetch prune true  To always --prune for git fetch and git pull in all your Git repositories   git config --global fetch prune true   This above command appends in your global Git configuration  typically    gitconfig  the following lines  Use git config -e --global to view your global configuration    fetch      prune   true     git config remote origin prune true  To always --prune but from one single repository   git config remote origin prune true                                            replace with your repo name   This above command adds in your local Git configuration  typically  git config  the below last line  Use git config -e to view your local configuration    remote  origin       url   xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx     fetch    refs heads   refs remotes origin       prune   true   You can also use --global within the second command or use instead --local within the first command     git config --global gui pruneDuringFetch true  If you use git gui you may also be interested by   git config --global gui pruneDuringFetch true   that appends    gui      pruneDuringFetch   true     References  The corresponding documentations from git help config      --global       emsp  For writing options  write to global    gitconfig file rather than the repository  git config  write to  XDG CONFIG HOME git config file if this file exists and the    gitconfig file doesn   t     nbsp      --local       emsp  For writing options  write to the repository  git config file  This is the default behavior     nbsp      fetch prune       emsp  If true  fetch will automatically behave as if the --prune option was given on the command line  See also remote  lt name gt  prune     nbsp      gui pruneDuringFetch       emsp   true  if git-gui should prune remote-tracking branches when performing a fetch  The default value is  false      nbsp      remote  lt name gt  prune       emsp  When set to true  fetching from this remote by default will also remove any remote-tracking references that no longer exist on the remote  as if the --prune option was given on the command line   Overrides fetch prune settings  if any

User · Answer

Since git 1 8 5  Q4 2013        git fetch   hence  git pull  as well  learned to check  fetch prune  and  remote   prune  configuration variables and to behave as if the  --prune  command line option was given    That means that  if you set remote origin prune to true   git config remote origin prune true   Any git fetch or git pull will automatically prune   Note  Git 2 12  Q1 2017  will fix a bug related to this configuration  which would make git remote rename misbehave  See  How do I rename a git remote       See more at commit 737c5a9      Without  git fetch --prune   remote-tracking branches for a branch the other side already has removed will stay forever    Some people want to always run  git fetch --prune        To accommodate users who want to either prune always or when fetching from a particular remote  add two new configuration variables  fetch prune  and  remote  lt name gt  prune            fetch prune  allows to enable prune for all fetch operations     remote  lt name gt  prune  allows to change the behaviour per remote          The latter will naturally override the former  and the -- no- prune option from the command line will override the configured default       Since --prune is a potentially destructive operation  Git doesn t keep reflogs for deleted references yet   we don t want to prune without users consent  so this configuration will not be on by default

User · Answer

If you want to always prune when you fetch  I can suggest to use Aliases   Just type git config -e to open your editor and change the configuration for a specific project and add a section like   alias  pfetch   fetch --prune      the when you fetch with git pfetch the prune will be done automatically

[git] Automatic prune with Git fetch or pull

`git config --global fetch.prune true`

`git config remote.origin.prune true`

`git config --global gui.pruneDuringFetch true`

References

`--global`

`--local`

`fetch.prune`

`gui.pruneDuringFetch`

`remote.<name>.prune`

Examples related to git