I follow a development process where I create a new local branch for every new feature or story card. When finished I merge the branch into master and then push.
What tends to happen over time due to a combination of laziness or forgetfulness, is that I end up with a large list of local branches, some of which (such as spikes) may not have been merged.
I know how to list all my local branches and I know how to remove a single branch but I was wondering if there was a Git command that allows me to delete all my local branches?
Below is the output of the git branch --merged command.
cd ~/projects/application
git branch --merged
Output:
STORY-123-Short-Description
STORY-456-Another-Description
STORY-789-Blah-Blah
* master
All attempts to delete branches listed with grep -v \* (as per the answers below) result in errors:
error: branch 'STORY-123-Short-Description' not found.
error: branch 'STORY-456-Another-Description' not found.
error: branch 'STORY-789-Blah-Blah' not found.
I'm using:
The 'git branch -d' subcommand can delete more than one branch. So, simplifying @sblom's answer but adding a critical xargs:
git branch -D `git branch --merged | grep -v \* | xargs`
or, further simplified to:
git branch --merged | grep -v \* | xargs git branch -D
Importantly, as noted by @AndrewC, using git branch for scripting is discouraged. To avoid it use something like:
git for-each-ref --format '%(refname:short)' refs/heads | grep -v "master\|main" | xargs git branch -D
Caution warranted on deletes!
$ mkdir br
$ cd br; git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/ebg/test/br/.git/
$ touch README; git add README; git commit -m 'First commit'
[master (root-commit) 1d738b5] First commit
0 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 README
$ git branch Story-123-a
$ git branch Story-123-b
$ git branch Story-123-c
$ git branch --merged
Story-123-a
Story-123-b
Story-123-c
* master
$ git branch --merged | grep -v \* | xargs
Story-123-a Story-123-b Story-123-c
$ git branch --merged | grep -v \* | xargs git branch -D
Deleted branch Story-123-a (was 1d738b5).
Deleted branch Story-123-b (was 1d738b5).
Deleted branch Story-123-c (was 1d738b5).