Remove merged branches from your local machine
If you work with a remote Git repository, you might encounter a situation where you still have branches on your local machine, but those branches have been removed from the remote repository.
Open a bash terminal (if you are on Windows you will have git bash. CMD, and PowerShell will not work).
Run the following command:
git fetch -p && git branch -vv | awk '/: gone]/{print $1}' | xargs git branch -d
Let’s break down the command:
git fetch -p: This command fetches the branches and their commits from the remote repository to your local repository. The -p or --prune option removes any remote-tracking references (i.e., origin/branch-name) to branches that have been deleted on the remote repository.
&&: This is a logical AND operator. In the context of command-line operations, it means “execute the following command only if the previous command succeeded.”
git branch -vv: This command lists all local branches and their upstream branches. If a local branch’s upstream branch has been deleted, it will show [gone] next to it.
An example where deleted-branch is deleted, only-local-branch was never pushed to the remote repository, and main and test-branch are both local and remote.
|awk '/:gone]/{print $1}': This part of the command pipes (|) the output of the previous command to awk, a text processing utility. The awk command is programmed to match lines containing :gone] and print the first field ($1) of those lines, which is the branch name.
![The result of git fetch -p && git branch -vv | awk ‘/: gone]/{print $1}’ given me only deleted-branch](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/th99z8egahzsaja9om72.png)
The result of git fetch -p && git branch -vv | awk ‘/: gone]/{print $1}’ given me only deleted-branch
| xargs git branch -d: This part of the command pipes the output of the previous command (i.e., the names of the branches to be deleted) to xargs, which executes the git branch -d command for each input. The git branch -d command deletes a branch.
So, in summary, this command fetches updates from the remote repository, identifies local branches whose upstream branches have been deleted, and deletes those local branches.