How to delete a Git branch both locally and remotely?

Matthew's answer is great for removing remote branches and I also appreciate the explanation, but to make a simple distinction between the two commands:

To remove a local branch from your machine:

git branch -d the_local_branch

To remove a remote branch:

git push origin :the_remote_branch

*Taken from here: https://makandracards.com/makandra/621-git-delete-a-branch-local-or-remote

You can also use the following to delete the remote branch

git push --delete origin serverfix

which does the same thing as

git push origin :serverfix

but may be easier to remember.

Tip: When you delete branches using

git branch -d <branchname>    # deletes local branch

or

git push origin :<branchname> # deletes remote branch

only the references are deleted. Even though the branch is actually removed on the remote the references to it still exists in the local repositories of your team members. This means that for other team members the deleted branches are still visible when they do a git branch -a.

To solve this your team members can prune the deleted branches with

git remote prune <repository>

this is typically git remote prune origin.

The Short Answers

Deleting a remote branch:

git push origin --delete <branch>  # Git version 1.7.0 or newer
git push origin :<branch>          # Git versions older than 1.7.0

Deleting a local branch:

git branch --delete <branch>
git branch -d <branch> # Shorter version
git branch -D <branch> # Force delete un-merged branches

The Long Answers: there are 3 different branches to delete!

When you're dealing with deleting branches both locally and remotely, keep in mind that there are 3 different branches involved:

1. The local branch X.
2. The remote origin branch X.
3. The local remote-tracking branch origin/X that tracks the remote branch X.

The original poster used

git branch -rd origin/bugfix

which only deleted his local remote-tracking branch origin/bugfix, and not the actual remote branch bugfix on origin.

To delete that actual remote branch, you need

git push origin --delete bugfix

The following sections are the detailed steps needed to actually delete these various branches.

Deleting the local branch X

git branch --delete X

# Or shorter
git branch -d X

# If X hasn't been merged yet, you'll need to force delete
git branch -D X

Deleting the remote branch X

You can use either of the following to delete the remote branch (depending on what version of Git you're using):

# Use an empty refspec to delete the remote branch.
# This will work in versions of Git older than 1.7.0.
git push origin :X

# If you're using Git version 1.7.0 or newer
# you can use the new --delete flag instead.
git push origin --delete X

Note that deleting the remote branch X from the command line this way will also delete the local remote-tracking branch origin/X, so it is not necessary to prune the obsolete remote-tracking branch with git fetch --prune or git fetch -p, though it wouldn't hurt if you did it anyway.

You can verify that the remote-tracking branch origin/X was also deleted by running the following:

# View just remote-tracking branches
git branch --remotes
git branch -r

# View both strictly local as well as remote-tracking branches
git branch --all
git branch -a

Pruning the obsolete local remote-tracking branch origin/X

If you didn't delete your remote branch X from the command line (like above), then your local repo will still contain (a now obsolete) remote-tracking branch origin/X. This can happen if you deleted a remote branch directly through GitHub's web interface, for example.

A typical way to remove these obsolete remote-tracking branches (since Git version 1.6.6) is to simply run git fetch with the --prune or shorter -p. Note that this removes all obsolete local remote-tracking branches for any remote branches that no longer exist on the remote:

git fetch origin --prune

# Or shorter
git fetch origin -p

Here is the relevant quote from the 1.6.6 release notes (emphasis mine):

"git fetch" learned --all and --multipleoptions, to run fetch from many repositories, and --prune option to remove remote tracking branches that went stale. These make "git remote update" and "git remote prune" less necessary (there is no plan to remove "remote update" nor "remote prune", though).

Alternative to above automatic pruning for obsolete remote-tracking branches

Alternatively, instead of pruning your obsolete local remote-tracking branches through git fetch -p, you can avoid making the extra network operation by just manually removing the branch(es) with the --remote or -r flags:

git branch --delete --remotes origin/X

# Or shorter
git branch -dr origin/X

See Also

• Official Linux Kernel git branch documentation.

• Official Linux Kernel git fetch documentation.

• Pro Git § 3.5 Git Branching - Remote Branches.

Another approach is

git push --prune origin

This will delete all remote branches that do not exist locally. Or more comprehensively,

git push --mirror

will effectively make the remote look like the local copy of the repo (local heads, remotes and tags are mirrored on remote).

I use the following in my bash settings:

alias git-shoot="git push origin --delete"

Then you can call:

git-shoot branchname

Since January 2013, GitHub included a Delete branch button next to each branch in your "Branches" page.

Relevant blog post: Create and delete branches

If you want to complete both these steps with a single command, you can make an alias for it by adding the below to your ~/.gitconfig:

[alias]
    rmbranch = "!f(){ git branch -d ${1} && git push origin --delete ${1}; };f"

Alternatively, you can add this to your global config from the command line using

git config --global alias.rmbranch \
'!f(){ git branch -d ${1} && git push origin --delete ${1}; };f'

NOTE: If using -d (lowercase d), the branch will only be deleted if it has been merged. To force the delete to happen, you will need to use -D (uppercase D).

You can also do this git remote prune origin

$ git remote prune origin
Pruning origin
URL: git@example.com/yourrepo.git
 * [pruned] origin/some-branchs

prune delete remote-tracking branches from git branch -r listing

In addition to the other answers, I often use the git_remote_branch tool. It's an extra install, but it gets you a convenient way to interact with remote branches. In this case, to delete:

grb delete branch

I find that I also use the publish and track commands quite often.

Many of the other answers will lead to errors/warnings. This approach is relatively fool proof although you may still need git branch -D branch_to_delete if it's not fully merged into some_other_branch, for example.

git checkout some_other_branch
git push origin :branch_to_delete
git branch -d branch_to_delete

Remote pruning isn't needed if you deleted the remote branch. It's only used to get the most up to date remotes available on a repo you're tracking. I've observed git fetch will add remotes, not remove them. Here's an example of when git remote prune origin will actually do something:

User A does the steps above. User B would run the following commands to see the most up to date remote branches

git fetch
git remote prune origin
git branch -r

Mashup of all the other answers. Requires Ruby 1.9.3+, tested only on OS X.

Call this file git-remove, make it executable, and put it in your path. Then use, for example, git remove temp.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'io/console'

if __FILE__ == $0
      branch_name = ARGV[0] if (ARGV[0])
      print "Press Y to force delete local and remote branch #{branch_name}..."
    response = STDIN.getch
    if ['Y', 'y', 'yes'].include?(response)
      puts "\nContinuing."
      `git branch -D #{branch_name}`
      `git branch -D -r origin/#{branch_name}`
      `git push origin --delete #{branch_name}` 
    else
      puts "\nQuitting."
    end
end