DEV Community

Mike Street
Mike Street

Posted on • Originally published at mikestreety.co.uk on

How to delete a Git branch

Deleting branches is important to ensure old code doesn't hang around or the wrong thing doesn't get merged

Note: In the examples below pow will be used for the branch name

Delete a local branch

If you have a local branch you want to delete you can run

git branch -d pow
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

If your branch has not been merged into your current branch you need to change the -d to a capital:

git branch -D pow
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Delete a remote branch

If you wish to delete the branch via command line, you have to "push" it with a colon (:) preceding the name

git push origin :pow
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Updating your local branch data

If you deleted your remote branch from another computer (or via the website if on Github/Gitlab), you might find it is still listed when running a git branch -a. This means your local Git repository thinks the branch still exits and could cause conflicts if you try to create a branch of the same name.

To remove these, you can fetch with an additional --prune parameter

git fetch origin --prune
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Tip: If you want it to always prune when you do a git fetch origin, you can set this as a global setting:

git config --global fetch.prune true
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Read time: 1 mins

Tags: Git

Speedy emails, satisfied customers

Postmark Image

Are delayed transactional emails costing you user satisfaction? Postmark delivers your emails almost instantly, keeping your customers happy and connected.

Sign up

Top comments (0)

Sentry image

See why 4M developers consider Sentry, “not bad.”

Fixing code doesn’t have to be the worst part of your day. Learn how Sentry can help.

Learn more

👋 Kindness is contagious

Please leave a ❤️ or a friendly comment on this post if you found it helpful!

Okay