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@schacon
Created April 26, 2011 19:19
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delete all remote branches that have already been merged into master
$ git branch -r --merged |
grep origin |
grep -v '>' |
grep -v master |
xargs -L1 |
awk '{split($0,a,"/"); print a[2]}' |
xargs git push origin --delete
@jbbarth
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jbbarth commented Apr 26, 2011

awk '{split($0,a,"/"); print a[2]}' might be replaced with cut -d"/" -f 2 for readibility (I presume cut is available on MacOSX as well as any Linux distribution)

@matschaffer
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https://gist.github.com/942981 handles the embedded slash. Anyone know the right conditions to get --merged showing the > line?

@malclocke
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Now 400% more awky, and down to 3 lines https://gist.github.com/943565

@catsby
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catsby commented Apr 27, 2011

@jbbarth @malclocke those solutions do not work for a project using git-flow, who's branch names are like @feature/name@

@mpictor
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mpictor commented Jul 14, 2012

If you run this while on a branch that tracks a remote branch and is not master, this script will delete the remote branch!

Change git branch -r --merged to git branch -r --merged origin/master to eliminate this.

I regularly create branches named mp/some-branch or review/some-branch. As a result, I vote for the change @ctshryock suggests. :D

One last change - I added a line at the top of the file, git remote prune origin, which cleans up local records of any remote branches that no longer exist.

@stevenkampen
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git branch -r --merged | 
grep origin | 
grep -v '>' | 
grep -v master | 
xargs -L1 | 
cut -d"/" -f2- | 
xargs git push origin --delete

@young40
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young40 commented Oct 15, 2014

greate

@guneysus
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I am using git-fiow and I dont wanna delete the origin/develop?

@rtpg
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rtpg commented Sep 29, 2015

@guneysus : replace grep -v master with grep -v develop

@arielelkin
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If you get a error: unable to delete 'origin/myBranch-1234': remote ref does not exist, run git fetch -p origin before.

I actually added that command to my version of the script (note that it's for branches from develop):

git fetch -p origin && git branch -r --merged | grep origin |grep -v '>' | grep -v develop | xargs -L1 | cut -d"/" -f2- | xargs git push origin --delete

@Emuentes
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Emuentes commented May 16, 2016

I tried this,
https://gist.github.com/Emuentes/80c96c3927911dae6e19

Works for me, I also use git-flow @guneysus

@zsoobhan
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zsoobhan commented Oct 11, 2016

@arielelkin I had the same issue. My solution was to run it in a for loop.

for branch in $(git branch -r --merged master | grep origin | grep -v develop | grep -v master | sed -E "s|^ *origin/||g")
do
    git push origin $branch --delete
done

https://gist.github.com/zsoobhan/53b598da50a5496f655a07bb9fb39151

@webysther
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For clean projects using /feature or /fix.

$ git fetch --prune;
$ git branch --remote --merged |
    grep origin |
    grep -v '>' |
    grep -v master |
    grep -v develop |
    xargs -L1 |
    cut -d"/" -f2- |
    xargs git push origin --delete;

@tkreuder
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tkreuder commented Apr 12, 2017

git fetch --prune; git branch -r --merged | grep origin | grep -v '>' | grep -v master | xargs -L1 | awk '{sub(/origin//,"");print}' | xargs git push origin --delete

In my case this would also delete the branches {development, release}, which is probably not what you want.

@starkcoffee
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starkcoffee commented May 10, 2017

awk is cool but a bit overkill. sed is cooler.

git branch -r --merged | grep origin | grep -v '>' | grep -v master | sed 's/origin\///' | xargs git push origin --delete

@kalkin
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kalkin commented Aug 31, 2017

sed is fine, but cut is more appropriate here. Also when using egrep it get shorter:

git branch -r --merged | grep origin | egrep -v '>|master' | cut -d/ -f2- | xargs git push origin --delete

@spezifanta
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I use sed so I am not limited to origin.
git fetch --all --prune && git branch --remote --merged | grep -v -P 'master|develop$' | sed -e 's/\// /g' | xargs -L1 -r git push -d; echo Done cleaning remote branches.

@hervenivon
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For the speedy users, do not forget the common develop branch

@voiski
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voiski commented Jan 31, 2018

Hi, thanks all for the tip to drop a huge list of merged branches but I believe that we can save time pushing all branches together to have one unique transaction:

git push origin --delete $(git branch -r --merged origin/master |  grep origin | egrep -v '>|master|develop' | cut -d/ -f2-)

@dimified
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dimified commented Feb 9, 2018

I like your solution @voiski. Can this somehow also be improved to avoid this message when no refs exist:

fatal: --delete doesn't make sense without any refs

@gustavomdsantos
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Best answer in my opinion @voiski 👏 👏 👏

@rcdailey
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rcdailey commented Aug 22, 2018

I created a script named git-merged on my PATH. Git recognizes this syntax and allows you to execute these scripts as if they are aliases. In this case, this script allows you to run git merged. The contents of the script are as follows:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
remote="${1:-origin}"
branch="$2"
git branch -r --list "$remote/*" --merged $branch \
    | sed "s/\s*$remote\///" \
    | egrep -v "^(HEAD|release|hotfix|master|develop)"

With this script, you can list merged branches on the remote (default behavior is to check remote origin for branches merged to HEAD):

$ git merged

You can fully specify the remote and target branch to check for merges:

$ git merged origin my-topic

Example above checks all remote tracking branches on remote origin that are merged to local branch my-topic. Using xargs, you can use this to effectively delete all merged branches on the remote:

$ git merged | xargs git push origin --delete

You can add the -n option to do a dry push to verify what will happen before you actually delete anything:

$ git merged | xargs git push origin --delete -n

The following branch patterns are ignored (supports git-flow branch naming):

  • release/1.2.3
  • hotfix/1.2.3
  • develop
  • master
  • origin/HEAD

The intention is to explicitly clean up stale, merged branches for feature development such as:

  • feature/my-thing
  • bugfix/crash-issue
  • my-topic-branch

@030
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030 commented Sep 19, 2018

Could you replace the current awk statement that resides in the gist file with the suggestion by @catsby, i.e. awk '{sub(/origin\//,"");print}'?

@christopher-hopper
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Here's a bash version, that doesn't rely on awk or sed or xargs.

for branch in $(git branch -r --merged master | grep origin | grep -v develop | grep -v master);
do
  git push origin --delete "${branch##*/}";
done

@ryan-collingham
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Here's a bash version, that doesn't rely on awk or sed or xargs.

for branch in $(git branch -r --merged master | grep origin | grep -v develop | grep -v master);
do
  git push origin --delete "${branch##*/}";
done

Clearest solution I've seen, it makes the intent much more explicit than a long chain of awk/sed/xarg calls.

Only thing I'd add is that it doesn't quite work for branches that have a '/' in the name - if branch="origin/foo/bar" then ${branch##*/} will be "bar" and not "foo/bar"! You can fix by using the non-greedy single # to match the substring:

for branch in $(git branch -r --merged master | grep origin | grep -v develop | grep -v master)
do
  git push origin --delete "${branch#*/}"
done

@ryanc414
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ryanc414 commented Jul 1, 2019

My solution to prune merged branches from local + multiple remotes, based on snippets above:

https://gist.github.com/ryanc414/f7686d2c97808b41ed8518a5840e2d78

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