branch-cleaning.md

Git commands to clean old branches:

Remote branches

git fetch origin --prune

• Before fetching, remove any remote-tracking references that no longer exist on the remote.
• Git has a default disposition of keeping data unless it’s explicitly thrown away; this extends to holding onto local references to branches on remotes that have themselves deleted those branches.
• This will quickly remove remote branches that have been merged

Local cleanup

1. Start with:

git branch --merged

• Only list branches whose tips are reachable from the specified commit
• We can chain onto this command to clean up our local merged branches:

2. First by removing master and develop from the list, then:

git branch --merged | egrep -v "(^\*|master|develop)"

3. Then passing each arg to git branch -d to remove the local copy

git branch --merged | egrep -v "(^\*|master|develop)" | xargs git branch -d'

4. Then combine these two commands into two aliases:

alias gbp="  git fetch origin --prune"
alias gbdm=' git branch --merged | egrep -v "(^\*|master|develop)" | xargs git branch -d && gbp'

5. Run gbdm to give your local copy a cleanup. I think of this alias as 'git branch delete merged'

Extra notes

Also found this nifty command: git branch --v | grep "\[gone\]" | awk '{print $1}' | xargs git branch -D

Powershell:PS> git branch --v | ? { $_ -match "\[gone\]" } | % { -split $_ | select -First 1 } | % { git branch -D $_ }