Git branch still exists after deleting locally and remotely

Question

I have a development branch called Atomics (more correctly, atomics). Its finished being developed. It tested OK, so it was merged into Master. I'm now ready to completely delete it since its no longer needed.

I really thought this question was clear and answered well: Delete a Git branch both locally and remotely. Alas, it did not work...

Here's what I did:

# Accepted answer, succeeded
$ git push origin --delete atomics

# Shit, it did not delete the local branch
$ git branch -a
...
* master
atomics

# Another answer. Whoops, causes an error
git push --delete origin atomics
error: unable to delete 'atomics': remote ref does not exist

# Try yet another answer:
git fetch --all --prune

# Check again
$ git branch -a
...
* master
atomics

According to Torek's answer:

$ git branch -d atomics
error: The branch 'atomics' is not fully merged.

# See below on the prelude that may have caused this
# (yet another Git black-hole)

# Yep, did not work
$ git fetch --prune origin
$ git branch -a
* master
atomics
...

In case it matters, this is Apple's Git:

$ git --version
git version 1.8.5.2 (Apple Git-48)

At this point, I have two questions. First, how do we delete local and remote branches that actually works? This may seem redundant given the cited question, but the question does not appear to be answered even though an answer was accepted.

Second, how do I recover from this special Git state where things are partially deleted?

---

Here's the prelude. The --squash is to ensure the log on Master is accurate.

$ git checkout master
$ git merge --squash atomics
# These files already existed in Master, but a 'git push' after the merge
# did nothing. Also, 'git status' showed they were modified.
$ git add a.h b.h a.cpp b.cpp
$ git commit a.h b.h a.cpp b.cpp -m "Mergae Atomics into Master"
$ git push

---

EDIT: I accepted Torek's answer because the man worked too damn hard not to get something out of it. Unfortunately, the procedure did not work for this question; and it did not work on the following experiment, when another dev branch was deleted. The tool is broken, and there's no amount of Q&A that can fix it.

Answer 1

TL;DR: use (at least) two commands, in any order. Delete local (and or remote-tracking, which is also local). Delete remote.

In your output, atomics is a local branch. To delete it, make sure you're not on it (you aren't, it would have been prefixed with *, that's just a general first step) and then use git branch -d to delete it.

[Edit to account for the edited-in remark about what happened with git branch -d: If Git complains that the local branch is not fully merged, Git is trying to tell you that there may be some commit(s) you will lose access to, that are not saved anywhere else. If that's OK—if you really do mean to ditch them, or if you mean to keep them but are quite sure they are safely saved somewhere—you can tell Git to force the delete, using git branch -D or git branch --delete --force. This instructs Git to ignore the commits that may be abandoned. End edit]

The push --delete stuff is to tell some other Git, at some remote site, to delete his local branch. What happens on some other site does not affect your local stuff in general. There are a few exceptions—in particular git fetch and git push can make local changes—but by default neither one affects any local branch at all, regardless of what it succeeds or fails at getting some other Git to do.

You may also need git fetch --prune origin to delete your remote-tracking branch (which, despite the name, is local to your repository). You can instead use git branch -r -d origin/atomics (locally delete remote-tracking branch origin/atomics).

Answer 2

This is a separate answer, partly so that I can get some formatting in, and also because we seem to be talking about a different repository and/or branch at this point.

Copying from GitHub, so I can see what's actually there

I start by cloning git://github.com/weidai11/cryptopp:

$ cd tmp
$ git clone git://github.com/weidai11/cryptopp
Cloning into 'cryptopp'...
remote: Counting objects: 7756, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (75/75), done.
remote: Total 7756 (delta 33), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 7681
Receiving objects: 100% (7756/7756), 7.48 MiB | 1.87 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (5480/5480), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
$ cd cryptopp/

Now I can view the branches as seen on GitHub. In my own repository, I have only a local master (just now created by git clone).

$ git branch -a
* master
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/master
  remotes/origin/alignas
  remotes/origin/arm-neon
  remotes/origin/det-sig
  remotes/origin/master
  remotes/origin/solaris

I see that there is a branch named alignas. Let's find the commit to which it points:

$ git rev-parse origin/alignas
d0760a44eab5e6da04690d4a0d80fc306abd0844

Are there any other names that point to this commit? If the branch is fully merged into some other branch, there will be, if not there will not:

$ git branch -r --contains d0760a44eab5e6da04690d4a0d80fc306abd0844
  origin/alignas

So there is at least one commit on origin/alignas that is not on any other branch. A brief look at it shows (edited a bit):

$ git show --name-status origin/alignas
commit d0760a44eab5e6da04690d4a0d80fc306abd0844
Author: [redacted]
Date:   [redacted]

    Fix CRYPTOPP_ALIGN_DATA placement

M       rijndael.cpp

If I were to delete this branch from GitHub now—not that I could, I have no write permission on GitHub for this repository and git:// offers no write permission—that commit would be dropped from GitHub, perhaps with some others. (Further inspection shows that commits before this point are mostly merges of things that are on other branches; we'd lose the merge commits, but the things being merged-in are protected by those other branches.)

Deleting from GitHub (I can't, so, hypothetical only)

Should you wish to delete this branch from GitHub right now, even though there is at least one commit that this would lose, you¹ could do this:

git push --delete origin alignas

That would leave you with remote-tracking branch origin/alignas in your own repository (assuming you have it now), but git fetch origin --prune or git remote prune origin would subsequently delete origin/alignas from your own repository:

git fetch origin --prune

or:

git remote origin prune

The git fetch origin --prune step should do the job, but in at least some versions of Git, this was broken for a while.

---

¹Assuming you have write permission and are using https:// or ssh://, of course. Neither is true for me, so I cannot.

The local branch, in your repository

You might also have local branch alignas in your repository. I do not have it in mine yet, but before you delete alignas from GitHub, while I still have origin/alignas in my repository, I can now do this:

$ git checkout alignas
Branch alignas set up to track remote branch alignas from origin.
Switched to a new branch 'alignas'

and now I do have that branch:

$ git branch -l
* alignas
  master

It's my current branch. Let's say I want to delete it from my repository copy (while leaving origin/alignas alone):

$ git checkout master
Switched to branch 'master'
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.

(this step is necessary because Git won't let me delete the branch I'm standing on)

$ git branch -d alignas
warning: deleting branch 'alignas' that has been merged to
         'refs/remotes/origin/alignas', but not yet merged to HEAD.
Deleted branch alignas (was d0760a4).

My version of git is 2.8.1. Apple git 1.8.x will probably give you an error about the branch not being properly merged.

Let me create local alignas again, then delete it again, more forcefully this time:

$ git checkout alignas
Branch alignas set up to track remote branch alignas from origin.
Switched to a new branch 'alignas'

This is the same as before: my Git used remote-tracking branch origin/alignas to create local branch alignas, and then put me on that branch.

$ git checkout master
Switched to branch 'master'
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
$ git branch -D alignas
Deleted branch alignas (was d0760a4).

Again, I have to get off it, then I can delete it. Once I have deleted it locally, I can't accidentally push it (see below).

Everyone else

Anyone else who has a copy of this repository may also have an alignas branch. Suppose Fred has a copy, for instance, and he does not delete his alignas. Suppose further that he has write permission for this repository on GitHub.

Any time after you have deleted alignas from GitHub, Fred could re-create it. All he has to do is git push origin alignas or git push origin --all, and it comes back on GitHub.

To stop that, you must stop Fred. :-)

Answer 3

The following solution helped me: rewrite the command, but with the -D flag git branch -D your_branch