How to Delete a git Remote Branch

By  on  

Keeping a tidy repository is important; not just a tidy codebase, but a tidy repository in as far as not having spare branches rotting around.  Generally the main repository doesn't keep multiple branches but sometimes you need to push to a main repository simply to get Travis CI to run tests.  Once a branch is merged, for example, we no longer need it around.

Deleting a branch on a local host machine repo is easy:

git branch -d <branch_name>

To remove a branch from the remote git repository, like a GitHub-hosted repository, you can execute:

git push <remote_name> --delete <branch_name>

If you learned something here, check out Delete Merged Branches with git!

Recent Features

  • By
    7 Essential JavaScript Functions

    I remember the early days of JavaScript where you needed a simple function for just about everything because the browser vendors implemented features differently, and not just edge features, basic features, like addEventListener and attachEvent.  Times have changed but there are still a few functions each developer should...

  • By
    Create Namespaced Classes with MooTools

    MooTools has always gotten a bit of grief for not inherently using and standardizing namespaced-based JavaScript classes like the Dojo Toolkit does.  Many developers create their classes as globals which is generally frowned up.  I mostly disagree with that stance, but each to their own.  In any event...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Create a Dojo Lightbox with dojox.image.Lightbox

    One of the reasons I love the Dojo Toolkit is that it seems to have everything.  No scouring for a plugin from this site and then another plugin from that site to build my application.  Buried within the expansive dojox namespace of Dojo is

  • By
    CSS :target

    One interesting CSS pseudo selector is :target.  The target pseudo selector provides styling capabilities for an element whose ID matches the window location's hash.  Let's have a quick look at how the CSS target pseudo selector works! The HTML Assume there are any number of HTML elements with...

Discussion

  1. It is even easier to delete a remote branch!

    git push origin :BRANCH_NAME

    Note the colon before the branch.

  2. You can also do

    git push :BRANCH_NAME

    – Note the colon, that states to delete the remote branch!

    • So it seems like it parsed my placeholders as HTML;

      git push origin :develop
      

      Would delete develop branch on the origin remote.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!