Pruning dead branches

Pruning dead branches

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

larsi@giant:~/src/emacs/trunk$ git branch -a | wc -l
229

Many of these are works in progress, of course, or things we're not sure
we're going to merge, but I think many are branches that have been
merged, but just not deleted.

I've got through the list and deleted "my" branches that I'd forgotten
to delete, but could everybody else also do that and see if they've
forgotten branches?

(It's not that this is terribly important, but we should prune a bit
once in a while.)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

Re: Pruning dead branches

[Stefan Kangas]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> I think many are branches that have been
> merged, but just not deleted.

I believe you could list all such branches with:

    git branch --all --merged origin/master

Re: Pruning dead branches

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 23.01.2022 20:58, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> I've got through the list and deleted "my" branches that I'd forgotten
> to delete, but could everybody else also do that and see if they've
> forgotten branches?

Did so now, thanks for the reminder.

Re: Pruning dead branches

[Phil Sainty]

Anyone wanting to have the remote deletions reflected
in their local working copies will need to tell git to
prune those references locally.

Assuming your upstream remote is named "origin", this
will show you what would be deleted locally:

  git fetch --dry-run --prune origin

(Repeat without "--dry-run" to actually do it.)

There's also a --prune-tags option (which must be used
in conjunction with --prune).

Do check the --dry-run first, and see the git-fetch man
page for details, as the pruning feature might not work
the way you expect (especially wrt tags, and/or if you
have multiple remotes configured for the repository).

Re: Pruning dead branches

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> writes:

> I believe you could list all such branches with:
>
>     git branch --all --merged origin/master

Right, that helps, but I guess many of the older branches haven't been
merged as such (especially the scratch/ ones).

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

Re: Pruning dead branches

[Juri Linkov]

> I've got through the list and deleted "my" branches that I'd forgotten
> to delete, but could everybody else also do that and see if they've
> forgotten branches?

I deleted my merged branches.  But for unmerged old branches,
is it ok to move them to old-branches with:

  git push origin origin/name:refs/heads/old-branches/name :name

Re: Pruning dead branches

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net> writes:

> I deleted my merged branches.  But for unmerged old branches,
> is it ok to move them to old-branches with:
>
>   git push origin origin/name:refs/heads/old-branches/name :name

If the code is never going to be merged, then deleting the branches
would be best, I think?  But I have no strong opinion here.  Eli?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

Re: Pruning dead branches

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
> Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2022 18:43:33 +0100
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net> writes:
> 
> > I deleted my merged branches.  But for unmerged old branches,
> > is it ok to move them to old-branches with:
> >
> >   git push origin origin/name:refs/heads/old-branches/name :name
> 
> If the code is never going to be merged, then deleting the branches
> would be best, I think?  But I have no strong opinion here.  Eli?

Yes, we should not keep old branches that have no value.  If they do
have some value, I see no reason to rearrange them -- just leave them
alone.

(Perhaps we should have some etc/BRANCHES file with short descriptions
of the branches we want to keep indefinitely.)