Git: How to unfetch remote branches (Github pull requests)

Question

I have ran

git fetch upstream +refs/pull/*:refs/remotes/upstream/pr/*
git fetch origin +refs/pull/*:refs/remotes/origin/pr/*

And I ended up with several hundreds of branches - 4 for each pull request (head, merge, and both from origin and upstream.

How can I get rid of these branches locally, in two steps?

I have tried

git branch -D refs/remotes/origin/pr/*

but that says "not found".

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 03 '15 at 07:44

8

I usually just remove files from .git/refs and lines .git/packed-refs

answered Oct 03 '15 at 07:44

max630

1

Hmm that sounds like a way to break something :) But I will try too – Ondra Žižka Oct 05 '15 at 12:33
10

...and neither of them were ever heard from again. – Jonathan Hartley Feb 12 '18 at 18:56
Ha ha. Nope I am still alive :) But came here back with the same issue, this time a colleague which commits every line he changes. I need to "mute" his branches in my `gitk`. – Ondra Žižka Feb 08 '21 at 04:07

Sascha Wolf · Answer 2 · 2023-06-29T09:11:00.613

3

AFAIK there is no "out of the box" command which does what you want but it can be solved by chaining some bash commands.

The command chain to delete the local branches could look like this:

git branch | grep -vE '^\*' | grep 'pr/' | xargs git branch -D

The version for the remote branches is very similar and uses the -r option for the git branch calls.

git branch -r | grep -vE '^\*' | grep 'pr/' | xargs git branch -rD

edited Jun 29 '23 at 09:11

answered Oct 01 '15 at 12:39

Sascha Wolf

whoa! thanks, works like a charm! you just need to add a remote name. i've just deleted 'main-rt' remote branch from 'origin' remote which I do not need in my clone of 'origin': `git br -Dr origin/main-rt`. The result was: `Deleted remote-tracking branch origin/main-rt (was 8488c870869b).`. – vladis Mar 09 '23 at 09:33

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:46

2

git branch -D $(git for-each-ref --format="%(refname:short)" refs/remotes/origin/pr/)

edited May 23 '17 at 11:46

Community

answered Oct 01 '15 at 12:41

VonC

This seems to be quite close to what I need, but in fact, these branches are remote, and I probably need to remove the information about the remote branches, but not the branches themselves. – Ondra Žižka Oct 05 '15 at 12:36
To be specific about why I want this: The hundreds of remote branches clutter all the ways to manage branches - GUIs, logs, command line tab completion, etc. – Ondra Žižka Oct 05 '15 at 12:37

3 Answers3