killing a branch

Hi,

When I need to delete a branch from my git tree, I'm currently using this (slooow) approach:

$ rm .git/refs/heads/branch-name $ git prune

to rid myself of the branch and associated objects. Is there a faster approach?

(please cc me, not on the list)

Jens Axboe <axboe@suse.de> writes:

Perhaps the "official" way is

	$ git branch -d branch-name ;# you may need -D
        $ git prune

but that essentially is the same as what you are doing. Note that having dangling objects in your repository is not a crime, and you do not have to religiously do "git prune" every time.

On Tue, Jan 10 2006, Junio C Hamano wrote:

So no time saved there :-)

I know, it just doesn't feel nice!

Jens Axboe <axboe@suse.de> writes:

Sorry, but I can think of only three reasons (and a half) why somebody cannot live with "one git prune at the end of the day before leaving" (or "week" for that matter) workflow:

 * the filesystem quota is too tight and you cannot afford to
   leave unused loose objects around.  May still be true on
   student accounts, perhaps, but I doubt this is much of an
   issue in the modern world anymore.

 * rsync is used to sync from a repository that dropped a branch
   just now, and you do not want to push the garbage out.  Well,
   if you are still using rsync, I'll tell about it to Linus ;-)
   Pushing via git native protocol over ssh would not send
   unreferenced objects out and will not contaminate the other
   end with the garbage.

 * you do not want to leave after starting prune before it
   finishes.  If it is your hobby to watch the paint dry, I
   cannot help you, but you could run prune under nohup (or
   always work inside "screen", which is what I do).

 + having unused things on the disk just does not _feel_ right.
   Well, maybe.  I can argue with a reason but not with a
   feeling.  On a bright side, leaving recently abandoned
   objects around for a while lets you run git-lost-found to
   recover if you accidentally deleted a still-useful branch.

On Tue, Jan 10 2006, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Yeah obviously not true.

Haven't used rsync in a long time, I use git:// and ssh:// exclusively.

:-)

Alright, I'll just have to shake the habit of running git prune to rid myself of that dirty dirty feeling.

On Tue, 10 Jan 2006, Jens Axboe wrote:

Yeah, I'm slowly shaking it off too. I used to run git-fsck-objects religiously just because I worried about bugs. I still do it, but especially with the recursive-strategy merging, I get "dangling blob" messages every once in a while that are _not_ due to bugs, but just due to the temporary merge object.

So I'm learning to ignore them, and prune the tree only occasionally, instead of compulsively every time.

		Linus

On Tue, Jan 10 2006, Linus Torvalds wrote:

Compulsive is the right word, it just itches to run the prune after killing a branch... I'll try and learn as well.