The problem

Your master branch is typically where all your code lands. All features branches are meant to be short-lived and merged into master once they are completed.

As time marches on, you can build up a long list of branches that are no longer needed. They’ve been merged into master, what do we do with them now?

The answer

Using git-sweep3 you can safely remove remote branches that have been merged into master.

To install it run:

pip install git-sweep3

Try it for yourself (safely)

To see a list of branches that git-sweep detects are merged into your master branch:

You need to have your Git repository as your current working directory.

$ cd myrepo

The preview command doesn’t make any changes to your repo.

$ git-sweep preview
Fetching from the remote
These branches have been merged into master:

  branch1
  branch2
  branch3
  branch4
  branch5

To delete them, run again with `git-sweep cleanup`

If you are happy with the list, you can run the command that deletes these branches from the remote, cleanup:

$ git-sweep cleanup
Fetching from the remote
These branches have been merged into master:

  branch1
  branch2
  branch3
  branch4
  branch5

Delete these branches? (y/n) y
  deleting branch1 (done)
  deleting branch2 (done)
  deleting branch3 (done)
  deleting branch4 (done)
  deleting branch5 (done)

All done!

Tell everyone to run `git fetch --prune` to sync with this remote.
(you don't have to, yours is synced)

Note: this can take a little time, it’s talking over the tubes to the remote.

You can also give it a different name for your remote and master branches.

$ git-sweep preview --master=develop --origin=github
...

Tell it to skip the git fetch that it does by default.

$ git-sweep preview --nofetch
These branches have been merged into master:

  branch1

To delete them, run again with `git-sweep cleanup --nofetch`

Make it skip certain branches.

$ git-sweep preview --skip=develop
Fetching from the remote
These branches have been merged into master:

  important-upgrade
  upgrade-libs
  derp-removal

To delete them, run again with `git-sweep cleanup --skip=develop`

Once git-sweep finds the branches, you’ll be asked to confirm that you wish to delete them.

Delete these branches? (y/n)

You can use the --force option to bypass this and start deleting immediately.

$ git-sweep cleanup --skip=develop --force
Fetching from the remote
These branches have been merged into master:

  important-upgrade
  upgrade-libs
  derp-removal

  deleting important-upgrade (done)
  deleting upgrade-libs (done)
  deleting derp-removal (done)

All done!

Tell everyone to run `git fetch --prune` to sync with this remote.
(you don't have to, yours is synced)

Deleting local branches

You can also clean up local branches by using simple hack:

$ cd myrepo
$ git remote add local $(pwd)
$ git-sweep cleanup --origin=local

Development

git-sweep uses git-flow for development and release cylces. If you want to hack on this with us, fork the project and put a pull request into the develop branch when you get done.

To run the tests, this command:

$ git clone https://github.com/talhajunaidd/git-sweep3
$ cd git-sweep
$ poetry install
...
$ poetry run tox

Requirements

• Git >= 1.7

• Python >= 3.7 < 3.10.0

License

Friendly neighborhood MIT license.