Git tip to remove remote branches already merged
Let’s talk about source control and an efficient way of using Git.
I like the projects where you have a `master` branch and a few feature branches, which are actively being worked upon. Only a few branches are present at a given time, and this is less confusing for the contributors in the repository.
A couple of times I have been on a project where old branches were not cleaned up.
I found that it’s really easy to list these branches and clean them up.
Step 1: List all branches that are already merged:
$ git branch -r --merged
Lists all remote branches which are already merged. In case you want to find the old ones, you can sort them by commit date with the flag `–sort=committerdate`
Example:
$ git branch -r --sort committerdate
Committerdate flag will put the most recent branches last (you can reverse with minus: `--sort=-committerdate`.
Step 2: List only relevant branches.
The list returned from above will also contain origin/HEAD and origin/master with we have to filter out:
$ git branch -r --merged | cut -d / -f 2 | grep -v master | grep -v origin
we simply remove them with `grep -v`
Step 3: Feed list into a delete command
The above command will give you a list of branches to remove. Review the list carefully by printing each line:
$ git branch -r --merged | cut -d / -f 2 | grep -v master | grep -v origin | xargs -n 1 echo
When you are satisfied, you can remove each branch with a git push command. Example
$ git push --delete origin merged_branch1
You can simply repeat this for as many times as you have branches with the above expression. So, in total your final command will be:
$ git branch -r --merged | cut -d / -f 2 | grep -v master | grep -v origin | xargs -n 1 git push --delete origin
And done :)
This post is following my series of blog posts with useful Git Tips
