Remove tracking branches no longer on remote

Question

Is there a simple way to delete all tracking branches whose remote equivalent no longer exists   Example   Branches  local and remote    master origin master origin bug-fix-a origin bug-fix-b origin bug-fix-c   Locally  I only have a master branch  Now I need to work on bug-fix-a  so I check it out  work on it  and push changes to the remote  Next I do the same with bug-fix-b   Branches  local and remote    master bug-fix-a bug-fix-b origin master origin bug-fix-a origin bug-fix-b origin bug-fix-c   Now I have local branches master  bug-fix-a  bug-fix-b  The Master branch maintainer will merge my changes into master and delete all branches he has already merged   So the current state is now   Branches  local and remote    master bug-fix-a bug-fix-b origin master origin bug-fix-c   Now I would like to call some command to delete branches  in this case bug-fix-a  bug-fix-b   which are no longer represented in the remote repository   It would be something like the existing command git remote prune origin  but more like git local prune origin

User · Answer

I use this method so I can have more control    git branch -D   git branch   grep -v  master    grep -v  develop     This is remove any branches not named  master or develop

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Most of these answers do not actually answer the original question  I did a bunch of digging and this was the cleanest solution I found  Here is a slightly more thorough version of that answer    Check out your default branch  Usually git checkout master Run git fetch -p  amp  amp  git branch -vv   awk     gone   print  1     xargs git branch -d   Explanation   Works by pruning your tracking branches then deleting the local ones that show they are  gone  in git branch -vv   Notes   If your language is set to something other than English you will need to change gone to the appropriate word  Branches that are local only will not be touched  Branches that have been deleted on remote but were not merged will show a notification but not be deleted on local  If you want to delete those as well change -d to -D

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Might be useful to some  simple one line to clear all local branches except master and develop  git branch   grep -v  master    grep -v  develop    xargs git branch -D

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None of this was really right for me  I wanted something that would purge all local branches that were tracking a remote branch  on origin  where the remote branch has been deleted  gone   I did not want to delete local branches that were never set up to track a remote branch  i e   my local dev branches   Also I wanted a simple one-liner that just uses git  or other simple CLI tools  rather than writing custom scripts  I ended up using a bit of grep and awk to make this simple command    This is ultimately what ended up in my    gitconfig    alias    prune-branches    git remote prune origin  amp  amp  git branch -vv   grep    gone     awk   print  1     xargs -r git branch -D   Here is a git config --global     command for easily adding this as git prune-branches   git config --global alias prune-branches   git remote prune origin  amp  amp  git branch -vv   grep        gone         awk       print  1         xargs -r git branch -d    NOTE  In the config command  I use the -d option to git branch rather than -D  as I do in my actual config  I use -D because I don t want to hear Git complain about unmerged branches  You may want this functionality as well  If so  simply use -D instead of -d at the end of that config command

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The pattern matching for  gone  in most of the other solutions was a little scary for me   To be safer  this uses the --format flag to pull out each branch s upstream tracking status   I needed a Windows-friendly version  so this deletes all branches that are listed as  gone  using Powershell   git branch --list --format    if equals  gone    upstream track   then   refname short   end                 -ne                 git branch -D        The first line lists the name of local branches whose upstream branch is  gone    The next line removes blank lines  which are output for branches that aren t  gone    then the branch name is passed to the command to delete the branch

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If you are using zsh shell with Oh My Zsh installed then the easiest way to do this safely is to use the built in autocomplete   First determine which branches you want to delete with     git branch --merged    branch1   branch2   branch3   master   this will show you a list of already merged branches  After you know a few you want to delete then type     git branch -d    All you have to do is hit  tab  and it will show you a list of local branches  Use tab-complete or just hit  tab  again and you can cycle through them to select a branch with  enter    Tab Select the branches over and over again until you have a list of branches you wnat to delete     git branch -d branch1 branch2 branch3   Now just press enter to delete your collection of branches   If you aren t using zsh on your terminal    Get it here

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This will delete all the merged local branched except local master reference and the one currently being used   git branch --merged   grep -v       grep -v  master    xargs git branch -d   And this will delete all the branches having already been removed from the remote repository referenced by  origin   but are still locally available in  remotes origin    git remote prune origin

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A simpler solution for Windows or others who don t want to can t script the command line or who don t want to bother with PowerShell  Dump the branch list into a file git branch  gt  branches txt  or git branch --merged  gt  branches txt  if you re the belt and suspenders type  git branch -d will protect against deleting unmerged branches  Open that file in your editor and combine all the lines  I used sublime text  so highlight all and press ctrl j  Add git branch -d  ahead of your branch list  Select all  copy  and paste  right click in windows cmd window  into the command line

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I have written a Python script using GitPython to do delete local branches which don t exist on remote      import git     import subprocess     from git exc import GitCommandError     import os      def delete merged branches            current dir   input  quot Enter repository directory  quot           repo   git Repo current dir          git command   git Git current dir             fetch the remote with prune  this will delete the remote references in local          for remote in repo remotes              remote fetch prune True                   local branches    branch name for branch in repo branches          deleted branches                 deleted branches are the branches which are deleted on remote but exists on local          for branch in local branches              try                  remote name    origin    branch                 repo git checkout remote name              except GitCommandError                if the remote reference is not present  it means the branch is deleted on remote                  deleted branches append branch                       for branch in deleted branches              print  quot Deleting branch  quot  branch              git command execute   quot git quot    quot branch quot    quot -D quot  branch                   clean up the work flow          repo git checkout  master           repo git pull        if   name         main             delete merged branches    Hope someone finds it useful  please add comments if I missed anything

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grep gone  lt  git branch -v    cut -d     -f 3   xargs git branch -d   The above command can be used to fetch branches which are merged and deleted in remote and it deletes the local branch which no longer available in remote

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I wouldn t normally answer a question that already has 16 answers  but all the other answers are wrong  and the right answer is so simple  The question says   Is there a simple way to delete all tracking branches whose remote equivalent no longer exists    If  simple  means deleting them all in one go  not fragile  not dangerous  and without reliance on tools that not all readers will have  then the right answer is  no   Some answers are simple  but they don t do what was asked  Others do what was asked  but are not simple  all rely on parsing Git output through text-manipulation commands or scripting languages  which may not be present on every system  On top of that  most of the suggestions use porcelain commands  whose output is not designed to be parsed by script   porcelain  refers to the commands intended for human operation  scripts should use the lower-level  plumbing  commands    Further reading     why you shouldn t parse git branch output in a script  tracking branches and the differences between git remote prune  git prune  git fetch --prune      If you want to do this safely  for the use case in the question  garbage-collect tracking branches which have been deleted on the server but still exist as local branches  and with high-level Git commands only  you have to   git fetch --prune  or git fetch -p  which is an alias  or git prune remote origin which does the same thing without fetching  and is probably not what you want most of the time    Note any remote branches that are reported as deleted  Or  to find them later on  git branch -v  any orphaned tracking branch will be marked   gone     git branch -d  branch name  on each orphaned tracking branch    which is what some of the other answers propose    If you want to script a solution  then for-each-ref is your starting point  as in Mark Longair s answer here and this answer to another question  but I can t see a way to exploit it without writing a shell script loop  or using xargs or something     Background explanation  To understand what s happening  you need to appreciate that  in the situation of tracking branches  you have not one branch  but three   And recall that  branch  means simply a pointer to a commit    Given a tracking branch feature X  the remote repository  server  will have this branch and call it feature X  Your local repository has a branch remotes origin feature X which means   This is what the remote told me its feature X branch was  last time we talked   and finally  the local repository has a branch feature X which points to your latest commit  and is configured to  track  remotes origin feature X  meaning that you can pull and push to keep them aligned   At some point  someone has deleted the feature X on the remote  From that moment  you are left with your local feature X  which you probably don t want any more  since work on feature X is presumably finished   and your remotes origin feature X which is certainly useless because its only purpose was to remember the state of the server s branch   And Git will let you automatically clean up the redundant remotes origin feature X -- that s what git fetch --prune does -- but for some reason  it doesn t let you automatically delete your own feature X    even though your feature X still contains the orphaned tracking information  so it has the information to identify former tracking branches that have been fully merged   After all  it can give you the information that lets you do the operation by hand yourself

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I came up with this bash script  It always keep the branches develop  qa  master   git-clear       git pull -a  gt   dev null    local branches   git branch --merged   grep -v  develop    grep -v  master    grep -v  qa    sed  s   s        branches    branches           if   -z  branches    then     echo  No branches to delete         return    fi    echo  branches    echo  Do you want to delete these merged branches   y n     read yn   case  yn in         Yy     return     esac    echo  Deleting        git remote prune origin   echo  branches   xargs git branch -d   git branch -vv

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Yet another answer  because none of the solutions suit my needs on elegance and cross-platformness   Command to delete local branches not on remote   for b in   git for-each-ref --format    if equals  gone    upstream track   then   refname short   end   refs heads   do git branch -d  b  done   To integrate it with gitconfig so it can be run with git branch-prune   Bash  git config --global alias branch-prune   git fetch -p  amp  amp  for b in   git for-each-ref --format       if equals  gone    upstream track   then   refname short   end      refs heads   do git branch -d  b  done    PowerShell  git config --global alias branch-prune   git fetch -p  amp  amp  for b in   git for-each-ref --format     if equals  gone    upstream track   then   refname short   end    refs heads   do git branch -d  b  done     Need help in finding a universal command for PowerShell and bash   Why this answer is the best    Offers a complete solution  adds a git branch-prune command to your git Works fine from Windows PowerShell The core idea is  jason rickman s bulletproof method using git for-each-ref Parsing and filtering is done with --filter so no external dependencies needed   Explanation    Adds a new alias to your    gitconfig  After executing this you can simply do git branch-prune Inside this alias    Fetches branches with the --prune flag  which  prunes remote-tracking branches no longer on remote  Uses git for-each-ref and --filter  to get a list of the branches are  gone   no remote  Loops through this list and deletes the branch safely

User · Answer

Powershell-based solution that I find more legible than many of the implementations here    prune deleted remoted branches git fetch -p    get all branches and their corresponding remote status   deleted remotes will be marked  gone  git branch -v      find ones marked  gone   capture branchName   select-string -Pattern        lt branchName gt  S   s  w    gone         foreach-object         delete the captured branchname       git branch -D    Matches 0  Groups  branchName

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TL DR   Remove ALL local branches that are not on remote  git fetch -p  amp  amp  git branch -vv   grep    gone     awk   print  1     xargs git branch -D   Remove ALL local branches that are not on remote AND that are fully merged AND that are not used as said in many answers before   git fetch -p  amp  amp  git branch --merged   grep -v       grep -v  master    xargs git branch -d   Explanation   git fetch -p will prune all branches no longer existing on remote git branch -vv will print local branches and pruned branch will be tagged with gone grep    gone   selects only branch that are gone awk   print  1   filter the output to display only the name of the branches xargs git branch -D will loop over all lines  branches  and force remove this branch   Why git branch -D and not git branch -d else you will have for branches that are not fully merged   error  The branch  xxx  is not fully merged

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After the command  git fetch -p   removes the remote references  when you run  git branch -vv   it will show  gone  as the remote status  For example     git branch -vv   master                 b900de9  origin master  behind 4  Fixed bug   release v3 8           fdd2f4e  origin release v3 8  behind 2  Fixed bug   release v3 9           0d680d0  origin release v3 9  behind 2  Updated comments   bug 1234               57379e4  origin bug 1234  gone  Fixed bug   So you can write a simple script to remove local branches that have gone remotes   git fetch -p  amp  amp  for branch in   git branch -vv   grep    gone     awk   print  1     do git branch -D  branch  done   Note that the above uses the  porcelain  command git branch to get the upstream status   Another way to obtain this status is to use the  plumbing  command git for-each-ref with the interpolation variable   upstream track   which will be  gone  just like above   This approach is somewhat safer  because there is no risk of accidentally matching on part of the commit message   git fetch -p  amp  amp  for branch in   git for-each-ref --format    refname    upstream track   refs heads   awk   2      gone    sub  refs heads         1   print  1     do git branch -D  branch  done

User · Answer

Drawing heavily from a number of other answers here  I ve ended up with the following  git 2 13 and above only  I believe   which should work on any UNIX-like shell   git for-each-ref --shell --format  ref   if equals  gone    upstream track   then   refname   end   refs heads   while read entry  do eval   entry       -z   ref     amp  amp  git update-ref -d   ref   amp  amp  echo  deleted  ref   done   This notably uses for-each-ref instead of branch  as branch is a  porcelain  command designed for human-readable output  not machine-processing  and uses its --shell argument to get properly escaped output  this allows us to not worry about any character in the ref name

User · Answer

I use a short method to do the trick  I recommend you to do the same as it could save some hours  amp  give you more visibility   Just add the following snippet into your  bashrc   bashprofile on macos    git-cleaner     git fetch --all --prune  amp  amp  git branch --merged   grep -v -E   bmaster preprod dmz b    xargs -n 1 git branch -d             Fetch all remotes   Get only merged branches from git   Remove from this list the  protected   important  branches   Remove the rest  e g  clean and merged branches       You ll have to edit the grep regex in order to fit to your needs  here  it prevent master  preprod and dmz from deletion

User · Answer

You could do this  git branch -vv   grep  origin     gone     awk   print  1     xargs git branch -d  P S   as pointed out by Sam H  execute this first  git remote prune origin

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May be this command is what you want  After run  git remote prune origin  then run  diff  lt  git branch   sed -e  s     g    lt  git branch -r   sed -e  s origin    g     grep    lt    this will show all branch which not in  git branch -r  but in  git branch  This method have a problem  it will also show the branch in local which have not pushed before

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I am not sure for how long  but I do use git-up now  which takes care of that   I do git up and it starts to track new branches and deletes the old ones   Just to make it clear  it is not out-of-box git command     https   github com aanand git-up  BTW it also stashes dirty tree and makes rebases still with just git up   Hope it ll be useful for someone

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Here s a solution that I use for the fish shell  Tested on Mac OS X 10 11 5  fish 2 3 0 and git 2 8 3   function git clean branches   set base branch develop      work from our base branch   git checkout  base branch      remove local tracking branches where the remote branch is gone   git fetch -p      find all local branches that have been merged into the base branch     and delete any without a corresponding remote branch   set local   for f in  git branch --merged  base branch   grep -v    master   base branch          awk    s  w  s    print  1        set local  local  f   end    set remote   for f in  git branch -r   xargs basename      set remote  remote  f   end    for f in  local     echo  remote   grep --quiet   s f s      if    status -gt 0         git branch -d  f     end   end end   A few notes   Make sure to set the correct base branch   In this case I use develop as the base branch  but it could be anything   This part is very important  grep -v    master   base branch          It ensures that you don t delete master or your base branch     I use git branch -d  lt branch gt  as an extra precaution  so as to not delete any branch that has not been fully merged with upstream or current HEAD   An easy way to test is to replace git branch -d  f with echo  will delete  f    I suppose I should also add  USE AT YOUR OWN RISK

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Based on Git Tip  Deleting Old Local Branches  which looks similar to jason rickman s solution I implemented a custom command for this purpose called git gone using Bash     git gone usage  git gone  -pndD    lt branch gt  origin  OPTIONS   -p  prune remote branch   -n  dry run  list the gone branches   -d  delete the gone branches   -D  delete the gone branches forcefully  EXAMPLES git gone -pn    prune and dry run git gone -d     delete the gone branches   git gone -pn combines the pruning and listing the  gone  branches     git gone -pn   bport fix-server-broadcast         b472d5d2b  origin bport fix-server-broadcast  gone  Bump modules   fport rangepos                     45c857d15  origin fport rangepos  gone  Bump modules   Then you can pull the trigger using git gone -d or git gone -D   Notes   The regular expression I used is   BRANCH     gone   where  BRANCH would normally be origin  This probably won t work if your Git output is localized to French etc  Sebastian Wiesner also ported it to Rust for Windows users  That one is also called git gone

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I found the answer here  How can I delete all git branches which have been merged   git branch --merged   grep -v        xargs -n 1 git branch -d   Make sure we keep master  You can ensure that master  or any other branch for that matter  doesn t get removed by adding another grep after the first one  In that case you would go   git branch --merged   grep -v        grep -v  YOUR BRANCH TO KEEP    xargs -n 1 git branch -d   So if we wanted to keep master  develop and staging for instance  we would go   git branch --merged   grep -v        grep -v  master    grep -v  develop    grep -v  staging    xargs -n 1 git branch -d   Make this an alias  Since it s a bit long  you might want to add an alias to your  zshrc or  bashrc  Mine is called gbpurge  for git branches purge    alias gbpurge  git branch --merged   grep -v        grep -v  master    grep -v  develop    grep -v  staging    xargs -n 1 git branch -d    Then reload your  bashrc or  zshrc        bashrc   or       zshrc

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Yet-another-answer for the pile  drawing heavily from Patrick s answer  which I like because it seems to do away with any ambiguity about where gone  will match in the git branch output  but adding a  nix bent   In its simplest form   git branch --list --format        if equals  gone    upstream track   then   refname short   end         xargs git branch -D   I have this wrapped up in a git-gone script on my path      usr bin env bash  action         DELETE   amp  amp  xargs git branch -D    cat    get gone       git branch --list --format          if equals  gone    upstream track   then   refname short   end      main       DELETE false   while      -gt 0     do     case    1   in        - dD    --delete  DELETE true        esac     shift   done   get gone   action    main          NB - The --format option seems to be fairly new  I needed to upgrade git from 2 10 something to 2 16 3 to get it   EDIT  tweaked to include suggestion about refname short from Benjamin W   NB2 - I ve only tested in bash  hence the hashbang  but probably portable to sh

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I like using pipes because it makes the command easier to read   This is my solution if you would like to remove all branches except master   git branch   grep -v master   xargs -n 1 git branch -D   To delete other branches that match your criteria  modify the first and second block   git branch --merged   grep feature name   xargs -n 1 git branch -D

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git fetch -p   This will prune any branches that no longer exist on the remote

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Here s the simple answer that worked for me using a git client   Delete the repository altogether from your machine then check out again    No mucking around with risky scripts

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Windows Solution  For Microsoft Windows Powershell   git checkout master  git remote update origin --prune  git branch -vv   Select-String -Pattern    gone            toString   Trim   Split      0        git branch -d      Explaination  git checkout master switches to the master branch  git remote update origin --prune prunes remote branches  git branch -vv gets a verbose output of all branches  git reference    Select-String -Pattern    gone   gets only the records where they have been removed from remote          toString   Trim   Split      0   get the branch name     git branch -d     deletes the branch

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Based on info above  this worked for me   git br -d  git br -vv   grep    gone      awk   print  1     xargs    It removes all local branches with are    gone    on remote

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This is gonna delete all the remote branches that are not present locally  in ruby    bs    git branch  split  bs2    git branch -r   grep origin  split reject    b  bs include  b split      1  -1  join          bs2 each    b  puts  git  push origin --delete   b split      1  -1  join            Explained     local branches bs    git branch  split   remote branches bs2    git branch -r   grep origin  split   reject the branches that are present locally  removes origin  in front  bs2 reject     b  bs include  b split      1  -1  join           deletes the branches  removes origin  in front  bs2 each    b  puts  git  push origin --delete   b split      1  -1  join

User · Answer

git remote prune origin prunes tracking branches not on the remote   git branch --merged lists branches that have been merged into the current branch   xargs git branch -d deletes branches listed on standard input   Be careful deleting branches listed by git branch --merged  The list could include master or other branches you d prefer not to delete   To give yourself the opportunity to edit the list before deleting branches  you could do the following in one line   git branch --merged  gt  tmp merged-branches  amp  amp      vi  tmp merged-branches  amp  amp  xargs git branch -d  lt  tmp merged-branches

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I don t think there is a built-in command to do this  but it is safe to do the following   git checkout master git branch -d bug-fix-a   When you use -d  git will refuse to delete the branch unless it is completely merged into HEAD or its upstream remote-tracking branch   So  you could always loop over the output of git for-each-ref and try to delete each branch   The problem with that approach is that I suspect that you probably don t want bug-fix-d to be deleted just because origin bug-fix-d contains its history   Instead  you could create a script something like the following      bin sh  git checkout master  amp  amp  for r in   git for-each-ref refs heads --format    refname short    do   if   x  git merge-base master   r     x  git rev-parse --verify   r       then     if     r      master        then       git branch -d   r      fi   fi done   Warning  I haven t tested this script - use only with care

User · Answer

Remove all branches that have been merged into master  but don t try to remove master itself   git checkout master  amp  amp  git pull origin master  amp  amp  git fetch -p  amp  amp  git branch -d   git branch --merged   grep master -v   or add an alias   alias gitcleanlocal  git checkout master  amp  amp  git pull origin master  amp  amp  git fetch -p  amp  amp  git branch -d   git branch --merged   grep master -v    Explanation   git checkout master  checkout master branch  git pull origin master  ensure local branch has all remote changes merged  git fetch -p remove references to remote branches that have been deleted  git branch -d   git branch master --merged   grep master -v   delete all branches that have been merged into master  but don t try to remove master itself

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This worked for me   git branch -r   awk   print  1     egrep -v -f  dev fd 0  lt  git branch -vv   grep origin    awk   print  1     xargs git branch -d

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This Below Commands Solved My problem      To Delete Branch Locally git branch -d localBranchName      To Delete Branch Remotely git push origin --delete remoteBranchName

[git] Remove tracking branches no longer on remote

Examples related to git

Examples related to git-branch