[git] How do you stop tracking a remote branch in Git?

How do you stop tracking a remote branch in Git?

I am asking to stop tracking because in my concrete case, I want to delete the local branch, but not the remote one. Deleting the local one and pushing the deletion to remote will delete the remote branch as well:

• How do I delete a Git branch both locally and in GitHub?

Can I just do git branch -d the_branch, and it won't get propagated when I later git push?

Will it only propagate if I were to run git push origin :the_branch later on?

You can delete the remote-tracking branch using

git branch -d -r origin/<remote branch name>

as VonC mentions above. However, if you keep your local copy of the branch, git push will still try to push that branch (which could give you a non-fast-forward error as it did for ruffin). This is because the config push.default defaults to matching which means:

matching - push all matching branches. All branches having the same name in both ends are considered to be matching. This is the default.

(see http://git-scm.com/docs/git-config under push.default)

Seeing as this is probably not what you wanted when you deleted the remote-tracking branch, you can set push.default to upstream (or tracking if you have git < 1.7.4.3)

upstream - push the current branch to its upstream branch.

using

git config push.default upstream

and git will stop trying to push branches that you have "stopped tracking."

Note: The simpler solution would be to just rename your local branch to something else. That would eliminate some potential for confusion, as well.

To remove the upstream for the current branch do:

$ git branch --unset-upstream

This is available for Git v.1.8.0 or newer. (Sources: 1.7.9 ref, 1.8.0 ref)

source

git branch --unset-upstream stops tracking all the local branches, which is not desirable.

Remove the [branch "branch-name"] section from the .git/config file followed by

git branch -D 'branch-name' && git branch -D -r 'origin/branch-name'

works out the best for me.

This is not an answer to the question, but I couldn't figure out how to get decent code formatting in a comment above... so auto-down-reputation-be-damned here's my comment.

I have the recipe submtted by @Dobes in a fancy shmancy [alias] entry in my .gitconfig:

# to untrack a local branch when I can't remember 'git config --unset'
cbr = "!f(){ git symbolic-ref -q HEAD 2>/dev/null | sed -e 's|refs/heads/||'; }; f"
bruntrack = "!f(){ br=${1:-`git cbr`};  \
    rm=`git config --get branch.$br.remote`; \
    tr=`git config --get branch.$br.merge`; \
    [ $rm:$tr = : ] && echo \"# untrack: not a tracking branch: $br\" && return 1; \
    git config --unset branch.$br.remote; git config --unset branch.$br.merge; \
    echo \"# untrack: branch $br no longer tracking $rm:$tr\"; return 0; }; f"

Then I can just run

$ git bruntrack branchname

You can use this way to remove your remote branch

git remote remove <your remote branch name>

Here's a one-liner to remove all remote-tracking branches matching a pattern:

git branch -rd $(git branch -a | grep '{pattern}' | cut -d'/' -f2-10 | xargs)

To remove the association between the local and remote branch run:

git config --unset branch.<local-branch-name>.remote
git config --unset branch.<local-branch-name>.merge

Optionally delete the local branch afterwards if you don't need it:

git branch -d <branch>

This won't delete the remote branch.

The simplest way is to edit .git/config

Here is an example file

[core]
        repositoryformatversion = 0
        filemode = true
        bare = false
        logallrefupdates = true
        ignorecase = true
[remote "origin"]
        url = [email protected]:repo-name
        fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
[branch "test1"]
        remote = origin
        merge = refs/heads/test1
[branch "master"]
        remote = origin
        merge = refs/heads/master

Delete the line merge = refs/heads/test1 in the test1 branch section

The easiest way to do this is to delete the branch remotely and then use:

git fetch --prune (aka git fetch -p)