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

Incredible Demos

  • By
    background-size Matters

    It's something that makes all men live in fear, and are often uncertain of. It's never spoken, but the curiosity is always there. Nine out of ten women agree in the affirmative. Advertisers do their best to make us feel inadequate but...

  • By
    PHP IMDB Scraper

    It's been quite a while since I've written a PHP grabber and the itch finally got to me. This time the victim is the International Movie Database, otherwise known as IMDB. IMDB has info on every movie ever made (or so it seems). Their...

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!