Re: Why does 'git branch -d' act differntly after clone?

Konstantin Hollerith <khollerith@gmail.com> writes:

In the former case, that branch is the only thing that knows about the commits near the tip of it. Immediately after you clone that repository, you have a copy of that branch as a remote-tracking branch for origin/neuerTestBranch. You didn't say how you got a local copy of it in there, but I'd imagine that in the clone you did something like:

    $ git checkout neuerTestBranch

which is a short-hand for

    $ git checkout -b neuerTestBranch origin/neuerTestBranch

and then went back to a branch other than that branch when you asked the branch to be removed, e.g.

    $ git checkout master
    $ git branch -d neuerTestBranch

without building any further history on neuerTestBranch.

Now, your local neuerTestBranch is a mere unmodified copy of the remote-tracking branch origin/neuerTestBranch; the commits on the former will not become unreachable if you remove neuerTestBranch, because they are all reachable via origin/neuerTestBranch. And that is why the deletion of it has less severe potential of information lossage, compared to the original case where you attempt to remove the only copy.