Cleaning up old remote git branches

1030

I work from two different computers (A and B) and store a common git remote in the dropbox directory.

Let's say I have two branches, master and devel. Both are tracking their remote counterparts origin/master and origin/devel.

Now while on computer A, I delete branch devel, on local and remote.

git push origin :heads/devel
git branch -d devel

Running git branch -a on computer A, I get the following list of branches.

master
origin/HEAD
origin/master

Running git fetch on computer B, I can remove the local devel branch with git branch -d devel, but I can't remove the remote devel branch.

git push origin :heads/devel returns the following error messages.

error: unable to push to unqualified destination: heads/proxy3d
The destination refspec neither matches an existing ref on the remote nor begins with refs/, and we are unable to guess a prefix based on the source ref.
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

git branch -a still lists origin/devel in the remote branches.

How can I clean up the remote branches from computer B?

git git-branch

Edit Report

1 Answer

Here is bash script that can do it for you. It's modified version of http://snippets.freerobby.com/post/491644841/remove-merged-branches-in-git script. My modification enables it to support different remote locations.

#!/bin/bash

current_branch=$(git branch --no-color 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/\1/')
if [ "$current_branch" != "master" ]; then
  echo "WARNING: You are on branch $current_branch, NOT master."
fi
echo -e "Fetching merged branches...\n"

git remote update --prune
remote_branches=$(git branch -r --merged | grep -v '/master$' | grep -v "/$current_branch$")
local_branches=$(git branch --merged | grep -v 'master$' | grep -v "$current_branch$")
if [ -z "$remote_branches" ] && [ -z "$local_branches" ]; then
  echo "No existing branches have been merged into $current_branch."
else
  echo "This will remove the following branches:"
  if [ -n "$remote_branches" ]; then
echo "$remote_branches"
  fi
  if [ -n "$local_branches" ]; then
echo "$local_branches"
  fi
  read -p "Continue? (y/n): " -n 1 choice
  echo
  if [ "$choice" == "y" ] || [ "$choice" == "Y" ]; then
    remotes=`echo "$remote_branches" | sed 's/\(.*\)\/\(.*\)/\1/g' | sort -u`
# Remove remote branches
for remote in $remotes
do
        branches=`echo "$remote_branches" | grep "$remote/" | sed 's/\(.*\)\/\(.*\)/:\2 /g' | tr -d '\n'`
        git push $remote $branches 
done

# Remove local branches
git branch -d `git branch --merged | grep -v 'master$' | grep -v "$current_branch$" | sed 's/origin\///g' | tr -d '\n'`
  else
echo "No branches removed."
  fi
fi

answered 2012-03-16T14:24:46.173

Cleaning up old remote git branches

1 Answer

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