The cool git: Git fetch --prune origin

TL;DR: Delete local branches from the remote deleted.

For humans: Match the deletion of remote branches.

If you're anything like me and like to keep your commit history clean, you'll want to delete your local branches when that has happened on the remote. As most teams use a centralized repository as source of truth, you probably want your local to match the remote.

Let me walk you through the process: You use your log to view the humungous amount of branches you have locally

git branch

It should output something like this:

Now, prune!

git fetch --prune origin

You should have deleted a ton of branches, but possibly silent. Check your log.

When you have few differences, it will display the process executed:

And now you have a cleaner local matching the remote.

PS: If you have more than one remote, you can pick one to match, I used origin as it's the default.

Well, you now can go faster on your git process with autocomplete, but when you need to do code archaeology, use Watermelon (opens in a new tab), a VSCode extension that gets the historical context of your code to make it easier to understand.

This blog post was originally released for Watermelon. Find it on our blog! (opens in a new tab)