Git branch merged on local repo but still visible on Github

Question

I'm using Git Flow for my project, and have completed the git flow feature finish step that merged my feature branch into my develop branch.

I then performed git push to GitHub, but on GitHub I still see the feature branch as well as develop.

When I run git branch locally, I only see develop and master, which is what I'd expect.

How can I remove the branch from GitHub? I could cope with this one, but if this happens for every feature I'll end up with a massive list of old branches.

Many thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Assuming the origin remote refers to your GitHub respository, you can delete the merged branch with:

git push origin :name-of-now-merged-branch

To explain that syntax further, when you do:

git push origin some-branch

... the some-branch parameter is actually a "refspec" which defines a mapping between a source name and a destination name, usually of the form <source-name>:<destination-name>. If there's no : in the refspec, it assumes that you mean some-branch:some-branch. The way to say "I just want to delete the remote branch" is to miss out the <source-name> completely, just ending up with : followed by the remote branch name.

Answer 2

Check which remote branches are available

git branch -r

Then you can delete the remote branch with:

git push origin :branchname

To delete the branch local

git branch -d branchname

Edit:

http://gitready.com/beginner/2009/02/02/push-and-delete-branches.html

Answer 3

As per this answer, if you do git push --all --prune, it will automatically remove all those merged branches without you having to go in manually and removing each one.