List or remove local tracked branches, which are deleted from the remote.

Addresses questions, like:

• Remove tracking branches no longer on remote
• How to prune local tracking branches that do not exist on remote anymore?

Why?

Because I'm tired of doing every time git fetch -p, git branch -r, git branch and keep comparing which branches are gone from the GitHub, but still available locally and doing git branch -D ${branch_name} on one by one of them.

What does it do?

This command will compare your local branches with remote and show you branches that are no longer available on remote but are still presented in your local repository. You can use it to view and delete all (remotely) removed branches in one go using --prune flag.

This command works without the need to run git fetch -p, but a working network connection to your remote is required. If no connection can be established with the remote repository, then local information about your remote will be used instead. If your local repository is not in sync with the remote repository, it will warn you about it.

Installation

NPM

$ npm install -g git-removed-branches

Please install a package globally with -g flag so that you can use it directly as a sub command of git, like this:

$ git removed-branches

NPX

It's also possible to use package through npx directly. Execute inside any git folder:

$ npx git-removed-branches

Usage

$ git removed-branches

This command will look through the branches that are no longer available on the remote and display them. In case you haven't run git fetch -p, it will warn you to do so.

This command is safe to run and it will not alter your repository.

Removing

To delete local branches use --prune or -p flag

$ git removed-branches --prune

This command will compare your local branches to the remote ones and remove, those which do not exist anymore on the remote side.

Different remote

If you have configured remote alias to something different than 'origin', you can use --remote or -r flag to specify the name of the remote. e.g., to specify remote to be upstream, you can use:

$ git removed-branches --remote upstream

Forcing removal

If you get an error when trying to delete branches:

The branch {branch_name} is not fully merged.

you can force deletion by using --force flag or use -f alias

$ git removed-branches --prune --force

Version

To find out, which version you use ( since 2.3.0 )

git removed-branches --version

Troubleshooting:

If you encounter error ERR_CHILD_PROCESS_STDIO_MAXBUFFER it is possible that your repository contains too much branches, more then 3382. ( see discussion )

You can fix this, by specifying NODE_MAX_BUFFER environment variable, like:

NODE_MAX_BUFFER=1048576 git removed-branches